


No One But Herself

by Licoriceallsorts



Category: Before Crisis - Fandom, Compilation of FFVII, Crisis Core - Fandom, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: F/M, Multi, Romantic comedy and drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 11:52:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2849894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Licoriceallsorts/pseuds/Licoriceallsorts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To protect Aeris from Shinra, Tseng hides her in plain sight - as a Turk. How will the newest member of the Department of Administrative Research adjust to her new colleagues? More importantly, will she learn to understand herself before it's too late?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lilly-white](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Lilly-white).



> A gift-fic for Lily-White (lilly-white.tumblr.com) for the Gaiasanta exchange at tumblr. Merry Christmas!! I hope I haven't missed the mark completely.

_"Emma's eyes were instantly withdrawn; and she sat silently meditating, in a fixed attitude, for a few minutes. A few minutes were sufficient for making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like her's, once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched -- she admitted -- she acknowledged the whole truth...It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!"_

_Jane Austen, "Emma"_

* * *

 

The day after Zack was killed, Tseng brought Aeris her eighty-eight letters and she, in a fit of fury at everything and everyone, set fire to them on a bonfire behind the church. She was angry with Zack for dying; with Tseng, for keeping the truth from her; with her mother, for having said some unforgiveable things about the boy who'd broken her heart; and with herself, for having doubted him.  According to Tseng, he'd been coming to Midgar to see her. If he'd stayed away, he might still be alive.

            "Did I need to know that?' she demanded.

            "I'm sick of lying to you."

            She jabbed her fire with a broom-handle, watching the hot ashes fly upwards.

            He said, "My own position is not secure. I don't know how much longer I can protect you."

            "Then don't bother." Throwing the broom-handle onto the flames, she stalked past him and headed for the vestry door without looking back. She knew he would follow.

            The scent of her flowers assailed her the moment she stepped inside the church. _Midgar's full of flowers, your wallet's full of money._ Each nook and cranny of this sacred place held a different memory of Zack. The hole he'd made in the roof when he came crashing into her life - the pew they'd been sitting in the first time he kissed her - the patch of coloured light on the floor where he'd huddled, shoulders shaking, as he wept for Angeal - the rafter where, until last week, his white monster had perched - and over in the corner, the flower wagon he had made for her. Four years of rust had accumulated on its wheels. How proud he'd been of it! How she wished she'd shown more gratitude! He had been so eager to please her. _When I come back_ , he'd said, _I'll make a better one, I promise. I want to make all your wishes come true._

She would never see him again, never hear him laugh again, never kiss him or smell his warm skin or look into his eyes  -

            Without warning her knees gave way. She sank down on the edge of the flowerbed, rocking back and forth, curled in on herself, howling with grief - but it was for Zack she was crying: the waste of his potential, the extinction of his dreams. For herself, her heart had resigned itself to its loss a long time ago. While she wept, the voices of the Planet hissed relentlessly in her ears. The Planet wasn't interested in any mere human pain. It had too much pain of its own.

            Tseng did not try comfort her. He never touched her; it was an unspoken rule of his. He simply waited, close at hand, until she had cried herself into a numb exhaustion and was lying on her side with her head pillowed on her arm, limp and light-headed, her eyes sore from weeping.  Then he began to speak. 

            His department, he said, had recently fallen under suspicion of sympathising with anti-Shinra elements. They had been accused of not trying hard enough to track down Zack. The daughter of his predecessor, Commander Veld, had been revealed as the ringleader of a terrorist cell, and there was a warrant out for both her arrest  and Veld's on charges of treason. The Old Man was becoming more and more erratic, more brutal; there was no telling where the axe might fall next.  Somehow he knew, or had guessed, that his precious Ancient was the reason Hojo's escaped specimen had tried to return to Midgar, and this knowledge had shaken him to the core. All the Old Man's hopes for the future were pinned on his Cetra.  Tseng feared that any day now the order might come to bring her in.

            Tseng only called President Shinra "The Old Man" when his guard was down, which meant he was speaking from his heart. Everyone had a heart; this was an article of faith with her. She didn't know how much of Tseng's was left, but such as it was, she felt confident it belonged to her.

            "I'll leave Midgar," she said.

            "I couldn't let you do that. You wouldn't survive five minutes out there."

            "You could come with me."

            His eyes flickered. She wondered if he'd ever thought about it. "I can't leave my department."

            "I thought your job was to protect me."

            "My job involves a variety of duties. It's not always easy to reconcile them."

            Sometimes he was so full of hot air. She rolled onto her other side, facing away from him, and reached out to brush her hand over the cool yellow petals of the nearest flower. The pollen stained her fingertips reddish-purple.

            "Aeris," he said, "I've been thinking. There might be another way...."

.

            _Hidden in plain sight_ was, she believed, the technical term for what he was proposing: to disguise her as one of his subordinates and bring her to live in the Shinra building, in the department of Administrative Research. 

            "Me, a Turk?" She laughed incredulously. "Are you mad?"

            "As long as you continue to live down here, we can't guarantee your safety. There are too few of us, and we have too many other duties. Danger could come for you when we're looking the other way. Up there, we'd be guarding you twenty-four seven."

            Had he concocted this scheme as a way of keeping her by his side? He was devious enough for it.  "And when the Old Man orders you to bring me in, what will you do then?"

            "Lie."

            "And if the Old Man realises you're lying?"

            "That is a potential danger. But there is always danger. Aeris - " Tseng leant forward, elbows propped on knees, his fine manicured hands pressed together. "Surely you see by now that our fortunes are linked? The Old Man lets you have your freedom because he trusts me to keep an eye on you. If and when he stops trusting me, the first one to know about it will be you. And it won't be pleasant. Do you understand me?"

            Every fibre of her being rebelled at the thought of setting foot in the Shinra Building. It would feel like a betrayal of everything she loved. "I can't. They killed my mother. They killed Zack."

            "They would do worse than kill you. If the time comes when I can no longer protect you, it won't make any difference whether you are down here or up there. But one thing I can promise you, Aeris - if and when the worst comes to the worst, I will do whatever is necessary to make sure you don't fall into Hojo's hands."

            As declarations of love went, she'd heard better. Zack had promised to build her a flower wagon and show her the sky. Tseng was promising to shoot her rather than let her become a test subject for Shinra's vivisectionists. She knew he would keep his word. It made her feel safe, strangely.

. 

            Why did she agree to his crazy plan? Because she wasn't stupid. She could see she was out of options. Because she didn't want to expose Elmyra to any more danger. Because she'd only stayed at the church so that Zack would know where to find her. Because he was dead, and she wanted to live.

            Because she was twenty-two, not seventeen, and she was bored with her little world, bored of living at home and selling flowers, bored by the slums, ripe for a change. Cetra were born for adventure. She'd been stagnating - waiting - too long.

            And anyway, in this mad world a crazy plan was the only kind that stood any chance of success.

.

             Having obtained her consent, Tseng left to "sort some things out," but returned as promised later in the afternoon, carrying a suitcase and accompanied by a slim young Turk with coppery curls and golden eyes. "This is Cissnei," he said, setting the suitcase down in the nearest pew. "She'll be taking care of you."

            Aeris recognised the name. Zack's friend - and more, perhaps?

            "I'll see you back at the office," said Tseng. "One hour."

            When he was gone, Cissnei opened the suitcase, took out a pair of scissors and cut off Aeris's beautiful hair, trimming it short like a boy's. The loss of all those heavy curls made her head feel weightless, as if it were floating above her shoulders. Cissnei swept up the cuttings and burnt them on the bonfire out back. Then she produced a bottle of hair-colour, dyed Aeris's crop a mousy brown, and helped her put in the matching contact lenses. But -

            "You're still too pretty," Cissnei declared, folding her arms and standing back to look her over.

            Aeris had been prepared to meet rivalry with rivalry, coldness with coldness, but Cissnei was so friendly and kind it was impossible not to warm to her. "Is that a bad thing?" she asked.

            "It is if you want to pass unnoticed. Now, try this on."

            The blue suit was surprisingly heavy; Tseng and others always moved in it with such ease. Cissnei said the weight came from the mythril thread that had been mixed with the wool for protection against materia. She rolled Aeris's old pink frock and raspberry denim jacket into a ball and threw them onto the bonfire. The sheepskin boots quickly followed. From now on Aeris would be wearing crepe-soled black Turk boots, silent as cat's feet.  Giving a final tug to her tie, she tucked Zack's pink ribbon into one pocket and her mother's materia into another, and set off to walk with Cissnei to the train station. This was the first test. Nobody called out a greeting to her. People she had known for years looked the other way when she passed.

            "All they see is the suit," Cissnei informed her, under her breath.

            It was the same in the train, and on the walk through Sector Eight to the Shinra Building. The suit created some kind of psychological exclusion zone. In the company lobby the atmosphere was friendlier. One of the front desk receptionists said, "New recruit?" and Cissnei said, "On probation," and the receptionist called out, "Good luck, rookie!" just as the lift doors were closing. They rode in silence to the forty-seventh floor, where the first person they met, a Turk with a blond bob and no-nonsense face, told them that the Boss had just popped down to accounts but would be back soon. "I've got time to show you around, then," said Cissnei.

            There was a lounge with panoramic windows and comfortable, slightly grubby sofas, and a TV set screwed to the wall. There were men's and women's washrooms, complete with showers. There was a locker bay, and a kitchen with a fridge containing nothing but beer, and a water-cooler, and some plastic pot plants. There was a big corner office that Cissnei called "The Pits", filled with computer work stations, metal desks, and filing cabinets; there was a stock cupboard, and a briefing room with a long, polished walnut conference table and black leather chairs, and an armoury, and a materia room where they had made up a little camp bed for her to sleep in - not permanently, Cissnei explained, but just until they figured out something better.

            "And this," said Cissnei finally, "Is The Door. You don't go in there. Understood? Your key won't open it.  If by chance you ever find it's been left open, shut it."

            "Why, what's in there?"

            "Oh, nothing. It's where the Old Man keeps all the bodies of his ex-wives."  Cissnei flashed a smile to show she was joking.

            Somewhere down the hall a phone was ringing. Aeris spotted it sitting on top of a desk close to the lifts: an ordinary, black bakelite, rotary telephone.

            "Where's that Asher got to?" grumbled Cissnei. "He's supposed to be on the duty desk. I'll have to get that. Go see if the Boss is back yet. Down the corridor, go right, first door on the left."

            As soon as Aeris turned the corner she saw that Tseng must have returned, for his door was ajar, spilling a wedge of yellow light across the marble floor and up the pale grey wall opposite.  She paused when she heard voices. One was Tseng's, quiet and deep; the other, almost as familiar to her, was a nasal drawl that never failed to set her teeth on edge. Tip-toeing forward, she caught the tail-end of what Reno was saying:

            "...be in denial, Boss."

            "Are you questioning my motives?"

            "Getting emotionally attached to the surveillance target _is_ kind of an occupational hazard in our line of business."

            Aeris felt her cheeks grow warm. Her heart fluttered.

            "When have I ever denied her importance?" Tseng replied, sounding irritated. "Aeris Gainsborough is the last of her kind. She is a sacred trust - "

            It was as if he'd dumped a bucket of ice water over her head. _Sacred trust_? Was that really how Tseng saw her? Like some kind of holy relic, left gathering dust in a church?

            "The world's future may depend on that child," he went on.

            "Child?" Reno snorted derisively. "Fucking hell, man, who are you trying to convince? Yourself?"

            "In my eyes she'll always be a child." Tseng's tone made it clear that the point was not open for debate.

            "It's okay, you can go in," said Cissnei, appearing behind her without warning in that silent way they all had. "When his door is shut we don't disturb him unless it's an emergency, but when his door is open you can just walk in."

            The last thing Aeris wanted to do at that moment was show her face to Tseng. Her cheeks were still burning. She needed time to process what she'd overheard. Of all the many, many things she had imagined, at night and in her daydreams, it had never - not once - crossed her mind that Tseng might see her as a burden.

            Cissnei took her by the elbow and steered her inside. "Ta-da! May I present our newest recruit?"

            "Unrecognisable," said Tseng. He sounded pleased.

            Right at this moment, having just seen herself through Tseng's eyes, _unrecognisable_ was a pretty accurate description of how she felt.

            Reno was leering at her, grinning that hungry stray dog grin of his. "You clean up nice, rookie. Real nice."

            Up until now she'd had little to do with Reno. What she had seen of him, she hadn't liked. His tongue lolled in a way that made her unpleasantly conscious of her own body. His smile never reached his eyes. He didn't like her either: that much was obvious. She wondered why.

            Cissnei handed Tseng a folded post-it note. "UrbDev just called. Asher's buggered off somewhere, so I answered it."

            Tseng unfolded the note, read it, folded it up again and gave it to Reno, saying, "Go help Reeve with his problem." To Cissnei he said, "Take her to the armoury and find a weapon for her. Something lightweight and defensive. She can't be issued with a firearm until she knows how to use it. I'd like Rosalind to instruct her. Can you ask her to draw up a training schedule? And when Asher comes in, tell him I want to see him immediately."

.

 

            That evening Cissnei took Aeris to The Goblins' Bar on Loveless Avenue - "Our regular," as she called it. The landlord kept a private snug upstairs reserved for the Turks's use. Some of the others had already arrived: Rude, Reno, a dark-haired slip of a girl called Aviva, and a rather pale and chastened Asher, who had only nipped down to the cafeteria for a bag of crisps and kept asking rhetorically, between chucking flights of darts at a dartboard, if getting the munchies was a capital offense now or something.

            "Come drink a toast to the new recruit," Cissnei coaxed him.

            The waif Aviva said to Aeris, "This is a tradition of ours."

            "Wetting the baby's head," said Rude.

            Reno stood up. "I'll get the next round in." He didn't stop to ask what anyone wanted. It seemed he just knew. For the real Turks he brought five pints of beer, while in front of Aeris he placed a white, frothy concoction adorned with candied cherries and rose petals and lashings of pink syrup, which she was apparently supposed to drink through a straw. With a completely straight face he told her it was called _The Blushing Bride._

To be honest, it looked exactly the kind of thing she might have ordered for herself back in the days when she was dating Zack. She felt certain it would taste delicious. But if Aeris knew one thing from her life in the slums it was that you couldn't let people start taking liberties. If you gave them an inch, they'd steamroller you flat into the ground.  So she shoved the mocktail back at him, lifted her chin, fixed him with her sternest eye, and demanded a beer of her own - and he looked her slowly up and down, as if he were re-thinking certain assumptions, and then he went off without another word and brought her a cold Zolom Triple X. She felt as if she'd won the first round. The only thing was, now she had to drink it.

            "What weapon did you choose?" Rude asked her.

            "A Guard Stick - "

            "A _staff_?" Reno sputtered into his beer. "What are you, a friggin' wizard?"

            Cissnei slapped the back of his head. "Shut up, fuckwit."

            "Hey, a staff, that's cool," said Asher. "Nobody else has a staff. What made you choose a staff?"

            "Nobody else has a staff because staffs are fucking lame," said Reno, grabbing Cissnei by the wrist and squeezing hard. She retaliated with a punch to his shoulder, and soon they were jabbing and poking at each other like a couple of squabbling siblings. To Aeris it looked like they were enjoying themselves. Reno twisted Cissnei's arm; she laughed and kicked his shin, and his knee jerk up and rattled the table, spilling everyone's drinks.

            "Cut it out," said Rude, flicking a beer mat at them.

            "So what's her code-name?" asked Reno, eliciting little yips from Cissnei as he pinched her under the table.

            " _Her_?" said Aeris. "I'm right here. And what do you mean, a code name?"

            "We all have code-names based on our weapons," said Aviva. "I'm Knives. Cissnei's Shuriken."

            Asher stood and gave an elegant bow. "Nunchuks, at your service."

            "Can we call her Staffy?" said Reno. "No, wait, I know - Sticky."

            "And this is Fuckwit," said Cissnei, tickling him under the armpit.

            "Named for my weapon, like the lady said - oh, ow, Ciss, stop - "

            "Then there's Rodders, and Two-Guns - " Aviva, aka Knives, ticked the names off on her fingers - "And Shotgun, and Gun who you met earlier, and Knuckles and Fists. And Legend, he _is_ one. And Rude - "

            "Didn't make a good impression at his interview," Asher cut in, laughing.

            " 'Baldy' was taken  - "

            "He's so gobby, always interrupting people -"

            Their rapid fire banter was impossible to follow: she couldn't tell when they were joking and when they were serious. "Why do you have code names?" she asked.

            "Because it's fun," said Asher.

            "So they're just nicknames?"

            "Not always." Rude had been quietly drinking his beer, but when he spoke, everyone hushed.  "You need a new name. We can't use the old one."

            Cissnei asked, "Did Tseng give you an alias?" Aeris shook her head.

            "I told you what we should call her," said Reno. "Sticky suits her."

            "No, I know!" cried Asher.  "I've got it. You use materia, don't you? We could call you 'Firaga'. What do you think?"

            "Firaga..." Aeris rolled the word on her tongue, tasting it. A hot, fierce name. The highest level of a destructive elemental attack. Dragons breathed Firaga. She smiled at Asher. "I think it'll do very nicely, thanks."

.

            That night as she lay on her narrow, sagging camp bed in the windowless materia room, her head spinning from the unaccustomed alcohol, her belly a little gassy with beer, Aeris allowed herself a moment in which to acknowledge the enormity of what she had done. All her life she had sworn she would rather die than set foot inside the Shinra Building.  And now here she was, not only _in_ Shinra but _of_ it: an employee; a Turk! Only a fake Turk, of course, an imposter in a blue suit, a fugitive hidden in plain sight - but nobody outside this floor knew she was a fraud. To the rest of the world she was Agent Firaga of the dreaded Department of Administrative Research.

            And for how long? Tseng had said she would need to stay hidden until the Old Man died, but that might be years. Was this going to be her life from now on?

            If she stayed a Turk long enough, would she eventually start believing her disguise was real? Could the others ever come to think of her as one of them? Could Tseng?

            No. She would always be a child to him. A little angel; a sacred trust. At least Zack had treated her as a woman...

            With a sob, Aeris turned over and buried her face in the pillow. She didn't want the Turk on the duty desk to hear her cry.


	2. Chapter 2

            The next morning she got up early, showered, cleaned her face and put on her suit, and Knives took her down to Personnel, where she was added to the payroll under the name Firaga and issued with an ID keycard: S-DAR/F/75.R. The R, Knives explained as they rode back up in the lift, stood for Restricted. The keycard would take her anywhere in the building between the lower levels of the parking garage and the fitness centre on the 64th floor - "Although we have our own private gym on the 45th floor," said Knives, "And it's better." Only S-level keycards gave access to the executive floors, 65 and above. "Tseng said that you were never under any circumstances to go there. He told me to make sure you understood that. No messing around, Firaga. It's serious. The Science Department is up there."

            Aeris's memories of her earliest childhood were fragmented and disjointed but painfully sharp: a half-remembered, technicolour nightmare. Once more doubts assailed her. Her real mother had died escaping from this building. Had she made the worst mistake of her life coming back here? But it was too late to change her mind now.

.

 

Sooner than she expected, Aeris found herself settling into a routine. The job was a real one; there was plenty to keep her busy, paperwork mostly, but it wasn't always easy and she took pride in doing it well.  She missed her mother less than she had expected. Tseng had moved Elmyra to a secret location; he would not tell her where. It was safer that way, he said. She could not bear to think of how lonely her mother must be without her, so she tried to think about Elmyra as little as possible - which was easy, with so much going on to distract her.

            She was never lonely. How could she be, surrounded by people twenty-four hours a day? And such _interesting_ people! Living among the Turks was like being in one of those afternoon soap operas her mother liked to watch while doing the ironing. There was literally never a dull moment.

            With the exception of Tseng, Aeris had never really considered the Turks as individuals before. To everyone in the slums they were, like SOLDIER, a job, a uniform, suits _en masse_ ; in the climate of fear that was Midgar they were the cold shadow of clouds passing over your face, the icy rain on the back of your neck. But since coming to live behind the scenes, so to speak, she had learnt they were as human as anybody else. They laughed, quarrelled, gossiped, played jokes on each other, goofed off, came down with the flu, stole from the stationery cupboard, pinched each other's food, borrowed money, argued about whose turn it was to make the coffee or replace the toilet rolls; they had bad hair days and birthdays; they had bills to pay, dental appointments to keep, cars that needed repair, relatives to put through school.

            Sometimes they talked about what else they might have done with their lives if they hadn't gone into the Turk businesss. Aeris, quietly eavesdropping while she got on with the filing, learnt from these conversations that Knives had once worked in a travelling circus on the Great Central Continent. Knuckles had been a famous private eye in his home town of Costa del Sol. Silver-haired Mink, a.k.a Fists of Steel, had been a monster hunter of some renown, and Rude, born and bred in the Sector Three slums, had spent several years as a professional boxer before the Turks snapped him up. It came as no surprise to Aeris to hear that Reno had once been a thief - he had no respect for anyone's property - but before embracing a life of crime he'd been apprenticed to an electrician, and that _did_ surprise her, as did the revelation that Cissnei had been only nine years old when she started her Turk training, having been hand-picked by Tseng's predecessor from an orphanage of over three hundred children.

            Aeris was so much in the habit of thinking of herself as something freakishly unique that it had never really occurred to her to wonder whether other children were in a similar situation. Hearing the story of Cissnei's stolen childhood made her realise for the first time how lucky she had been. She had had not one, but two mothers to protect her - not to mention Tseng. Cissnei had had nobody. Yet she seemed happy with the way things had turned out, almost defiantly so. While the others talked about their might-have-beens and their roads untravelled, Cissnei declared that she would not want any other life, not even for a day. Her sole ambition was to live and die a Turk. 

.

            Aeris had always prided herself on her sunny disposition. She looked for the good in people, and didn't let the bad get her down. ButReno! - he was really testing her limits. Whenever their paths crossed - which, admittedly, wasn't often; he was the Turks second-in-command and top field agent, out of the office more often than in, while she was a mere file clerk - he'd drop some snide comment designed to make her feel self-conscious, or embarrassed, or incompetent, or all three. Aeris couldn't understand what his problem was. Being disliked was a new experience for her, and Reno's dislike was so patently obvious that she could see, by the looks on their faces, that the others felt sorry for her - though not sorry enough, it seemed, to speak up on her behalf. She felt they were watching her, waiting to see how she handled the situation.

            She was alone in the Turks' lounge, curled up on one of the sofas with a cup of tea, watching a documentary about dolphins, when Reno's silhouette darkened the doorway. Her first instinct was to shrink back into the cushions; her second, in defiance of the first, was to sit up straighter and spread her elbows a little wider, trying to fill more space. He slouched into the room on his silent Turk feet, flung himself full-length onto the opposite sofa, and turned his head to stare at her with those unsettling pale eyes. She stared right back at him. Wasn't that what they said you should do when you met a wolf? Keep eye contact; don't blink.

            Almost a minute passed. She'd be damned if she'd be the one to speak first.

            Finally he said, "You're looking pretty comfortable there, Firaga." He pronounced her name as if it were an old jest between them.  "You all out of little jobs to do? I bet if you asked Tseng, he could drop what he's doing and find something to keep your hands busy."

            A treacherous blush threatened to colour her cheeks. She absolutely could not let him see that he was getting to her. "Don't you have anything better to do than bother me?" she demanded.

            "Not really."

            Enough was enough. She would take the bull by the horns. "Reno, do you have a problem with me?"

            "Nah," he grinned. He had an awful lot of teeth. "Babe, it's you who has the problem with me."

            She should have known it would be pointless trying to discuss anything rationally with this man. He really was a - What Cissnei always called him. The only possible course of action was to leave. She started to get to her feet, but the next thing she knew his hand was pinning her wrist to the arm of the sofa, and not gently, either. She'd never dreamed anybody could move so fast.

            "I don't believe in you," he said.

            He was staring at her - not aggressively, more like he was scrutinizing her, taking inventory. "What?" she exclaimed. "Did you think I'd start fading away? I'm not a fairy."

            "I don't know what you are," he said, "But I know you ain't no Turk, and sooner or later someone's gonna figure that out. You stick out like a sore thumb, _Sticky._ You lack the basic fundamentals. You don't know one end of the gun from the other, you couldn't fight you way out of a paper bag, you can't tell a lie to save your life - and you're just so gosh-darn fucking _cute_."

            Aeris felt her hackles rise. Maybe she had a little wolf in her, too. "If that's how you feel, why don't you turn me in?"

            His reaction astonished her. He looked appalled - and disgusted. The pressure on her wrist increased. He was hurting her now, and she knew he knew it.       "There's a little thing called loyalty?" he said. "Maybe you haven't heard of it. All those years Zack was being tortured by Hojo - how many guys did you date?"

            Resentment boiled in her breast at those words. Nobody had told her the truth about Zack; she thought he'd simply left her, without a word of farewell. Those other guys had been her feeble attempts to move on _._ They'd all been disappointments. She'd never seen any of them twice. Not one of them had come close to measuring up to Zack.

            And anyway, how was this any of Reno's business? She didn't owe him an explanation.

            "Let go of me," she said quietly.

            "Tseng's the most intelligent guy I know," he said, making no move to release her. "But for some reason he can't think straight where you're concerned. I mean, look at you. You're nothing special. Just a nice, ordinary, cute girl. And we got no use that I can think of for nice cute girls in this department. Oh, wait; there is one - "

            With his lips and tongue he made a gesture so lewd that Aeris felt herself go hot and cold all over: hot with shame, cold with revulsion. One more she tried to break free. If only she were capable of swearing; she longed to tell him to _fuck off._  Her mind could think the words, no problem, but somehow, when she tried to utter them, her throat closed up.

            He was watching her with laughter in his eyes.  Mustering her dignity, she said as calmly as she could, "Leave me alone."

            "Or what? You gonna run to Tseng and tell on me? Get him to smack my naughty little bottom? Grow up. You gotta learn to fight your own battles if you want to live here."

            "Who says I do?"

            She tried to yank her arm free - and he let her go, timing the release perfectly so that she went tumbling backwards, landing on her arse with a spine-tingling jolt. He burst out laughing. She picked herself up, trembling with fury from head to foot. If only she'd had her materia with her! She would have melted that stupid grin right off his ugly face.

            Her outrage seemed to amuse him. "Hey," he said, "Relax, Sticky. You're not my type. It'd take a microscope to find your tits - "

            His mocking laughter followed her all the way down the corridor.

.

            Cissnei found her in the ladies' toilets, splashing cold water over her face. "Firaga, did you let Reno upset you?"

            " _Let him_?" Fresh tears welled in her eyes, tears of betrayal. She'd been starting to think of Cissnei as a friend. "Did I ask for that? He won't get away with this. I - "

            "Don't tell Tseng." Cissnei put a hand on her arm. "He'll be forced to discipline him, and that won't end well for you, trust me."

            "Then what am I supposed to do?"

            "Find a way to sort it out," the Turk said bluntly. "You're wearing the suit now. Nobody's going to mollycoddle you. Do you think we go crying to the Boss every time somebody hurts our feelings? Words aren't bullets. You've got to toughen the hell up."

            "I would expect _you_ to defend him," said Aeris scornfully.

            "Yes," said Cissnei, "That's exactly what you can expect."

.

            Aeris was so furious that at first she could not see the wisdom in Cissnei's advice. Tseng was her protector: he would make Reno pay. More than once she got as far as Tseng's closed door, and had even raised her hand to knock, but some instinct always stopped her.

            _Toughen up. Nobody's going to mollycoddle you. Fight your own battles._

She didn't want to burden Tseng. Maybe there was a better way to solve the Reno problem...

            The next morning she put her Fire and Ice materia in her wrist-bracer and waited for her chance. It came in the early afternoon. Reno had drunk a couple of beers at lunch and his guard was down. He was sitting at one of the workstations in the Pits, typing at top speed on the computer while talking into the PHS clamped between his shoulder and his ear. Rude, Nunchuks and Knives were also in the room. They observed Aeris creeping up silently behind Reno, and exchanged amused glances, but did not make a sound. Reno, absorbed by his screen and his phone call, noticed nothing.

            His pride and joy, his ponytail, lay exposed between his suited shoulderblades. He'd been growing it for about a year now. Aeris held the Fire materia to the ponytail's tip. Within seconds the hairs were smouldering. She kept the heat down to the bare minimum; Tseng would be angry if she made Reno's head explode, and anyway she didn't want to kill him, she just wanted to teach him a lesson.

            Reno took the phone from his shoulder, lifted his head, sniffed. "Guys, something's burning."

            "Hur-hur," Rude laughed into his hand. Knives was biting her knuckles in glee. Nunchuks looked awestruck.

            "It smells like... burnt hair - " said Reno

            " _Your_ hair," Aeris murmured.

            "Fuck!" he howled, leaping out of his chair and beating himself around the head. "My hair! I'm burning! My hair's on fire!"

            "I'll save you." From her other hand she let loose a small blast of Ice. The spell burst above his head, drenching him with cold water that ran inside his collar and plastered the red spikes of his hair to his skull. He looked like a drowned cat. Rude laughed so hard his chair tipped over. Knives was crying with laughter.  Nunchuks, blue eyes round with amazement, exclaimed, "Oh man, Firaga, how'd you do that? That's some hell of a control you've got."

            "Don't fucking encourage her," said Reno.

            Aeris smiled sweetly. "Looks like I'm not completely useless after all."

            A strange sound interrupted her: a bit like a bark, a bit like someone coughing to clear his throat. Looking round, she saw Tseng leaning in the doorway, arms folded, laughing. Pride swelled her heart. She'd never heard him laugh before.

.

            Two days passed before Reno caught her alone. She tensed, prepared to fry his bacon, but he approached with his hands raised, palms turned outwards. "Hey, cool it, Sticky. I come in peace."

            "Say sorry."

            He chewed on this for a bit. "Yeah, you know what? I'm not gonna say sorry, 'cause I'm not sorry, and I bet you're not either.  But I'll take back what I said about the fundamentals. You can defend yourself, I'll give you that. And you don't take shit. You might just pass muster, if nobody looks too close. That's all I got, take it or leave it."

            Aeris put her chin in the air and said in her haughtiest voice, "I suppose it will have to do, then." She waited until he had left the room to smile.

            From then on there was a truce between them. He never made any friendly overtures towards her, never teased her or flung a casual arm around her shoulders, never gave her a small gesture of thoughtfulness when she least expected it, the way he did with the others.  Yet sometimes she caught him watching her with that same re-assessing look she'd seen that first night in the Goblins, as if he were still trying to make his mind up about her.... And sometimes, she was pretty sure, the only reason she caught him looking at her like that was because he let her.


	3. Chapter 3

One of the things that surprised Aeris most about her new life as a Turk was the ease with which she fell asleep each night, tucked in her little bed on the 46th floor of the Shinra Building. Back home, falling asleep had been a nightly ordeal requiring a conscious tuning-out of the Planet's moans and sighs. Up here, there was only the throb of the reactors, which never missed a beat, and the hissing iron lung of the building's ventilation system, switching on and off at regular intervals. The silence was blissful.  
.  
Shotgun, the Turk with the long legs and the sassy ponytail, who was constantly checking her own reflection in any glossy surface - windows, mirrors, metal doors, the back of a teaspoon, the glass in the frame holding the big Shinra logo that hung between the lift doors - decided one day that her skin was looking a bit muddy, and went out and bought a pot of live mint and a pot of lemongrass with which to make cleansing infusions. "I paid a bloody fortune for those," she told the others. "So don't you guys even think about touching them."  
The following morning Aeris woke up early and went to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water. To her dismay, she saw that the lemongrass had been sprouting rather too exuberantly - in fact, it had become so top-heavy that its pot had tipped over and its roots were digging into the cracks in the splashback grouting, while its leaves had shot up to touch the ceiling. The mint was just as bad. Green runners completely encircled the window and had formed knotty tangles around the taps; exploratory tendrils were reaching down into the plughole.  
"Holy shit, Firaga," said Two-Guns behind her. "The Boss needs to see this." He snapped a photo over her shoulder with his PHS and sent it to Tseng. Less than a minute later, Two-Gun's phone rang, but by then she was already ripping the green stuff down in handfuls. She didn't need Tseng to tell her that this must never happen again. As soon as he'd finished with his phone call, Two-Guns helped her. They crammed all the mint and lemon grass into a paper bag, and then he took it away to the incinerator.  
.  
A couple of weeks later she was doing some photocopying when Nunchuks - blond, pretty, pink-cheeked Asher - came in clutching a handful of wilted flowers. She recognised them straight away: old friends, fallen on hard times. Tseng had vetoed her request that she be allowed to go down to the church and tend them from time to time.  
"These are the last," said Nunchuks. "Without the sunshine of your smile they lost the will to live, I guess. You want me to put them in some water? I'm sure you could coax them into blooming a little longer."  
As long as her flowers lived, Tseng said, they betrayed her presence in Midgar. She shook her head. "Better let them die." It was safer that way.  
.  
She was manning the duty desk one evening when the lift door opened and Reno and Cissnei emerged dragging a struggling woman between them. Blood stained the woman's blouse and matted her hair. Her mouth had been gagged using socks and black duct tape. Her hands were cuffed behind her back. The Turks pushed and shoved her down the corridor to the door that Aeris's key would not open. Cissnei's key turned in the lock , and as it did, the woman bucked frantically, like a trapped animal that would rather chew its own leg off than accept its fate. Aeris, sitting frozen by the telephone, got one good look at the woman's face, bruised, bloody, one eye swollen shut, the other rolling wildly, seeking help or some means of escape, and fixing on Aeris - but before she could blink, Reno had kneed the door open and was pushing the woman through, out of sight, and he and Cissnei followed. From the opening of the lift to the shutting of the forbidden door had taken no more than fifteen seconds.  
No one had told Aeris what went on behind that door, but she knew. She knew she would never see that poor woman alive again.  
Her first reaction was a visceral one. She felt her gorse rise, and only just managed to make it to the toilet in time. Luckily, there was no one around to hear her vomit. When her stomach was empty, she sat down on the cold tiles and rested her head on her knees, panting for breath, haunted by the glassy look of terror in the doomed woman's eyes. Her heart was thinking I should have stopped them, but her mind knew that was foolish. She could not have stopped them. A Turk let no one and nothing get in the way of doing his job.  
And these assassins were her saviours. Once again her stomach convulsed, but she retched in vain; she had nothing left to hurl.  
.  
The prospect of confronting Reno did not appeal to her, so she waited for a chance to speak to Cissnei alone. "That woman - " she began.  
Cissnei cut her short. "Don't waste your sympathy."  
"Who was she? What did she do?"  
"She deserved to die. That's all you need to know."  
Cissnei began to walk away, but Aeris caught her arm. "Who decides that? Do you decide that? Does Tseng?"  
Cissnei glared at her. Aeris had never seen those golden eyes look so cold. Was this Cissnei's killing face? Suddenly she couldn't let go of the Turk fast enough, stumbling over her own feet as she backed away.  
"Wait here," said Cissnei. She turned and left the room. Aeris was under no obligation to obey; she wasn't a real Turk, and Cissnei wasn't really her superior. Nevertheless she waited, and soon Cissnei returned, carrying a plain manila folder. Before passing it to Aeris, she said, "Innocence is a scarce commodity round here. Tseng wants to protect yours. But I think you have a right to make up your own mind. Here, look at these. Wait - sit down first. They're not pretty. Call me when you're done."  
The photographs were black and white. She didn't think she could have borne to look at them in colour, the body parts reduced to cuts of meat, red paint drenching everything. In black and white the blood became merely shadows. A severed hand was a lost glove. The dead boy could have been sleeping. But even in monochrome some things were too terrible to look at. Those burnt black bodies had been people, with names, faces, families, people who loved and missed them. Some kind of incendiary bomb must have killed them. Quickly she closed the file, and her eye caught the name on the cover. Junon.  
"Do you think they deserved to die?" said Cissnei from the doorway. She was holding two cups of tea. Aeris supposed that eventually she would feel like eating and drinking again, but right now she couldn't imagine it.  
"Who did this?" she asked.  
"That particular group is called Avalanche. That woman was one of their bomb-makers. She had no problem deciding who should live and who should die. Don't ever try to make us feel guilty for what we do, Firaga, because it won't work. We're all way past that."  
.  
Another morning she went into the girl's washroom and was confronted by a flood: overnight a tree sapling had sprung up in one of the toilets, and its roots had cracked the pan. She fled in search of Cissnei. "Don't tell Tseng," she begged.  
Cissnei looked horrified at the mere suggestion of keeping such a thing from the Boss. "Of course he must be told."  
Further investigation revealed that a peach pit someone had flushed down the toilet had lodged in the U-bend and germinated. Not wanting to call the plumbers, who would require some kind of explanation, Tseng assigned Knives and Rod to make the repairs.  
"I know you can't help it," he told her. "I just wish.... Never mind. I'm not blaming you."  
No real Turk would have got off so lightly.  
.  
It seemed to her that since coming to live in Tseng's office she saw less of him than she had when she lived in the slums. She felt as if she'd become a task to be delegated. Take, for example, the martial arts lessons:  
She was in the kitchen eating her breakfast when the silver-haired Turk, Mink, popped her head round the door to announce that Tseng had decided Aeris should start learning unarmed combat, since she was making so little headway with her shooting. Aeris choked down the piece of toast she had been chewing, which of all of a sudden felt terribly dry, and said, "Is he so busy he couldn't spare two minutes to tell me this himself?"  
"Don't take it to heart. He has so many claims on his time. Everybody wants a piece of him. At least he's thinking about you, hm? Here - " Mink tossed her a regulation pair of navy blue shorts and a singlet with the Shinra logo woven over the heart. "Meet me at the gym in half an hour."  
In the old life, if Tseng had tried to tell her what to do she would have dug her heels in and refused. Up here, he was obeyed without question - with the exception of Reno, of course, who reserved the right to ask questions and then obey. But Reno was Tseng's second-in-command. Aeris - Firaga - was just a rookie, and not a very talented one at that. She went and got changed.  
.  
Self-defence was more interesting than target practice, and consequently she made better progress. "You don't have much natural ability," said Mink, who was, like all the Turks, brutally honest. "But you're willing to put the effort in, so you'll get by." Aeris understood the Turks well enough by now to know that this was praise.  
She came to the gym as usual one morning, about a week before Harvest Festival, to find Mink, dressed for a workout, standing outside the closed door, peering through the little window. When Mink saw Aeris, she motioned her over, and stood aside to let her see.  
Tseng, barefoot, stripped to the waist, was laying into the punching bag as if it had insulted his mother's virtue. His fists were blurs; his loose hair clung in loops to his sweating, sinewy upper back. He moved on the balls of his feet like a dancer. Aeris was speechless. She had never seen him out of his suit before. In fact, Zack was the only other man she had ever seen in a comparable state of undress - and he, too, had been beautiful, but where Zack had been all glamorous charm and bulging muscles, a show of force, Tseng was clean, dark lines, pure functionality.  
She jumped when Mink whispered in her ear, "Someone must have made him angry. Probably the President."  
Aeris couldn't reply. Her mouth had gone dry. What she was seeing now could never be unseen.  
"A girl can dream, huh?" said Mink.  
"No, no," Aeris babbled, "It's not like that, you're wrong, I've known him all my life, I would never think of him like that - "  
"Hey, listen." Mink's eyes were kind. "We're all a little bit in love with him. Because we know he'd die for us. And vice-versa, of course. Come on, we'd better go. He doesn't like being watched."


	4. Chapter 4

            Whenever two or more Turks got together, there was one topic above all others that dominated the conversation.

            Sex.

            Sex talk in the Gainsborough household had been limited to the following advice: _Boys only want one thing,_ _and it's your job to make sure they don't get it._ Well, Elmyra hadn't put it quite like that, but Aeris had got the message... and rebelled against it when Zack came along. Making love with him had been a revelation: he gave as much as he received. Yet even with Zack it had been a struggle, at first, to speak plainly about her preferences and desires. That old ingrained modesty kept kicking in. 

            Clearly the Turks did not suffer from this problem. They all talked frankly, freely, constantly - and often hilariously - about what they got up to both in bed and in a wide variety of other places, describing their escapades in glorious technicolour detail. It didn't take long for Aeris to realise that when it came to sex, she really was the rookie in this department. Merely eavesdropping on their chit-chat was an education in itself.

            One-night stands were their principal M.O.  Boyfriends and girlfriends never lasted long. They weren't supposed to become "emotionally compromised" with each other - the rule was right there in the company handbook, printed in black and white - but Aeris was pretty sure Reno and Cissnei got up to all kinds of stuff together; they were always touching each other when they thought nobody was looking. Rod was into guys, _lots_ of guys, while little Knives liked girls, big girls; she had developed a massive crush on Pearl Matheson, the first woman in SOLDIER, whose stern face could be seen on almost any street corner staring out of the current recruiting posters. Nunchuks said he wasn't fussy. "Any port in a storm," he cheerfully declared. Rude was the only one who didn't kiss and tell, but then again, he didn't need to say a word: the others knew all about his hopeless, unrequited love for a barmaid down in the slums of Sector Seven, whom Two-Guns had nicknamed "Twin-Turbines", and they teased him mercilessly for it.

            Love, in their world, was a weakness.

            They didn't deliberately exclude her from these conversations, but they never invited her to join in either. They assumed, correctly, that her sex life was currently non-existent. But a girl could dream, and a girl did dream: while she was sleeping her unconscious mind replayed the Turks' stories with herself as the protagonist - and when she awoke, panting and unsatisfied, she was appalled to remember who the partners in her dreams had been: Sephiroth (!! Why? She'd never found him remotely appealing, and also, he was dead); Gary the post-room boy with the freckles and the cute smile; a smarmy actor off the TV; Rod, who didn't even _like_ women; and once, horribly, Reno.

            Never Zack or - Never anyone she wanted.

.

            Tseng was the great mystery. Aeris wasn't the only one in the department consumed with curiosity about his personal life; nobody knew; it was all speculation. Reno could get nothing on him. Tseng covered his tracks with all the secretiveness one would expect from a Chief Turk, and would not raise to the bait, no matter how persistent the needling.

            "It's cause you're not getting any, isn't it, Boss? You ain't telling 'cause there's nothing to tell."

            "I'm forever alone," Tseng replied, with the kind of bland smugness that strongly implied he was lying but which might, in itself, be an act.

            In the old life, she would have assumed he was lying to cover up the truth: namely, that he was in love with her. What innocent days those had been, in retrospect. He had been right to call her a child, vain and naive in equal measure. 

.

The more time she spent with the Turks, the easier it was to forget that these people did terrible things for a living. Of course, Zack had done some terrible things, too. He had killed people, enemies of Shinra. That hadn't stopped her from loving him. Aeris was beginning to suspect she might be a moral relativist; that with her, personal feelings carried more weight than abstract principles. If she liked someone, she could always make excuses for him.

            Anyway (she thought), in this cruel and chancy world, blind luck was all that separated the innocent from the guilty. Without Ifalna and Elmyra, and Tseng of course, she too might have been forced to do terrible things, just to survive. She was no better than they were. Just luckier.

.          

            When the Harvest Festival rolled round, she put on a grey sweater dress and knee boots and a crushed-blueberry velvet jacket and went with the other off-duty Turks to join the festivities in Fountain Square. There was pie eating, apple-bobbing and toffee-pulling; a choir sang; champagne corks popped up on the dais; fireworks filled the sky. President Shinra made a speech. Nunchuks bought her a cup of hot mulled cider from a street vendor and Aeris sipped it gratefully, skin tingling with excitement.  Tseng was on bodyguard duty up on the dais. He moved like the President's shadow; Aeris wondered how many people in the crowd actually noticed he was there. As for herself, she was finding it hard to look anywhere else.

            In her old life, she had taken it for granted that she was the most important thing in Tseng's world.  She hadn't understood about this other life of his - his real life, she supposed she should call it; his bigger life, so much bigger and more complicated than anything she'd imagined down there in her little world. Up here, he was the important one.

            She wanted to ask him, "Suppose I was trapped on a rock out at sea, and President Shinra was trapped on another rock, and the tide was rising, and you only had time to save one of us?" In the old life, she wouldn't have thought twice about teasing him with cheeky questions, but it just didn't feel right any more.  Nobody else in the department would have dreamed of speaking to him like that, except Reno, of course, and Cissnei, who had known him since they were both children.

            Down below he had been hers alone. Up here, he belonged to all of them. _Everybody wants a piece of him_. She would just have to get in line -

            He caught her watching him, and gave her a smile, a quick smile, so quick that if she'd blinked she would have missed it; but such as it was, it was all hers. The anxious thoughts that had been weighing on her heart blew away, and she realised she felt happy, happier than she'd been since... well, in quite a while.

.

            This feeling of happiness buoyed her up for the rest of the afternoon, and was probably responsible for the strange thing that happened that evening. The festivities in the Square were winding up, and some of the other Turks had already headed off to the Goblins, when Knives said she needed to go buy a present for someone, and invited Aeris to come with her.

            "Who's the lucky giftee?" Aeris asked, as they shoved their way through the milling throngs on Loveless Avenue. Whenever she wore the Turk suit, a path would magically open before her, but when, as now, she was dressed in civvies, she had to elbow her way forward like everyone else.

            "SOLDIER Second Class Pearl Matheson."

            "She got promoted? Oh!" Aeris exclaimed, "Does this mean - you and she - "

            "Sadly, no. I'm afraid I'm just another adoring fan, worshipping from afar. Down here," said Knives, steering her into a quiet, narrow lane of shops below, apartments above. "She's from Banora, so I thought she might like something apple-y. There's a silversmith along here that does beautiful earrings - "

            Hearing footsteps running up behind her, Aeris turned to see who it was. This small movement probably saved her life. A knife, intended for her neck, instead plunged deep into her shoulder muscle. Frozen in disbelief, she couldn't make a sound. It was like a bad dream. Her assailant's face was covered by a balaclava. All she could see were his eyes.

            "Death to the Shinra," he shouted, pulling the blade out and preparing to strike again.

            A shot rang out. Knives had fired her gun. Aeris heard the bullet enter his flesh, saw him stagger and press a hand to his ribs. Twisting round, he delivered a back-handed blow that drove his blade deep into Knives' stomach.  She dropped the gun, doubled over, and fell to her knees clutching her belly.

            "So die all enemies of Wutai," the man cried.

            Somewhere overhead a window was thrown up and a man's voice shouted, "Hey, you - leave those girls alone. We're calling PSM."

            With a curse, the man threw his knife at Aeris and turned and ran. The blunt side of the blade struck a glancing blow on her cheekbone before clattering to the pavement. She became conscious of pain: her shoulder felt as if it were on fire. But what did that matter, when Knives lay bleeding out at her feet? The Turk's lips were blue; her breath came in shallow gasps. The pool of blood was spreading with shocking speed. If Aeris didn't do something fast, Knives would die, here, now, in this street.

            Because she was off-duty, she had left her staff and materia back in the office. She'd have to manage without. Ignoring her own pain, she knelt down in the blood and took the Turk's icy-cold hands between her own. She didn't know what she was doing. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

            Warmth flowed between them. The more warmth she poured into Knives, the hotter she herself became. Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades. It was like pouring water into the soil of her flower-bed back at the church: she felt the Turk's body soaking up the energy, felt the life quicken in her veins. Knives' cheeks grew pink again. Aeris sensed torn flesh knitting itself back together, like a film running backwards - though whichsense she used to do this, she could not have explained. In her shoulder she felt a tightness, a tugging. Her wound was healing itself.

            Knives took several deep breaths, and opened her eyes.

            "Firaga!"

            That deep voice could only belong to Rude. Aeris looked over her shoulder and saw him running towards them.  She'd forgotten he was on duty in Sector 8 tonight. "Knives!" he cried, "Are you okay? What happened?"

            Aeris couldn't speak. Powerful aftershocks were still rippling through her body. Every nerve throbbed. The light seemed brighter; the air smelled sweeter; all the ambient noises sounded louder, sharper. She felt radiant, as if she could have run up a mountain, laughing all the way.

            Doors were opening and people were emptying into the street, asking each other what all the commotion was about. Rude bent down and scooped Knives into his arms. "We better go," he said. "Let's hustle."

            By the time they got back to the office, Knives seemed fully recovered. She swore up and down that she was perfectly fine, never better - and indeed, not so much as the faintest trace of a scar could be seen on her smooth, flat belly. Nevertheless Rude insisted she check herself into the infirmary overnight. When that was done, he told Aeris she would need to write an incident report. She tried, but could not hold the pen; her fingertips were fizzing with pins and needles, as though they'd received an electric shock. Rude filled the form out for her.  When they'd finished, he gave her a tranquilizer and put her to bed.

            The next morning, very early, Tseng summoned her to his office. "Tell me what happened," he said. "Leave nothing out." Still groggy from her drugged sleep, her story wasn't very coherent, but Tseng pulled the details from her. She felt he was being rather brusque. Again and again he returned to the matter of the healing.  "And you're absolutely sure you had no materia with you?"

            "No. Nothing."

            "How is that possible?"

            "I can't explain it. I didn't know I could that. I just... She was _dying_ , Tseng. I just did it."

            "Could you do it again?  Could you do it on demand?"

            "Why do you keep asking me questions you know I can't answer?"

            "Because I'm afraid," he snapped at her, "And I don't know what else to do."

            Roughly he pushed his chair back and stood up, crossing in three long strides to the window, where he stood with his back to her - unwilling, it seemed, to let her see his face.

            "What are you afraid of?" she asked softly.

            He didn't answer. She saw his fists clench.

            "Tseng?"

            "You seem hellbent on making my job more difficult than it needs to be." He spoke through gritted teeth, which might have accounted for the steely edge to his tone, as though he was fighting to control his anger. It certainly sounded like anger. "Do you have any idea how hard we've worked to build your cover? If someone had seen you - if anyone outside the department ever suspected you can Cure without materia - Your cover would be blown wide open. Is that what you want?"

            Aeris could hardly believe her ears. "I thought Knives' life might be of some value to you."

            "There's a pharmacy in that lane - people who could have helped. Knives had a phoenix down on her. What you did was not necessary."

            "I see." Aeris was having trouble containing her own mounting anger. The effort was making her face numb.

            "Do you? By your own account, this is a power you cannot control. I'm beginning to wonder if I can afford to let you go outside, if it means an unacceptable level of risk."

            " _Let_ me?" said Aeris, with a dangerous glint in her eye.

            Tseng was too wrought up to see it. "Of course Knives is valuable to me. All my Turks are. I don't think you have any idea how hard I work to keep them alive. I wouldn't willingly let any of them run the risk you ran last night, not unless the stakes were life and death. But at the end of the day, everyone in this department is replaceable, including me. Whereas you - you are a different order of being - "

            She had heard enough. Too much; her heart was sick of it. Leaping to her feet, she cried, "I'm not a thing you can keep in a box, Tseng. I'm a human being, like you. I have to _live_. Stop treating me like a holy relic. It's suffocating me! You can't keep me locked up, I won't _let_ you!"

            Anger flashed in his eyes. The nails of her own white-knuckled fists were digging into her palms. He strode towards her, hand raised. With a cry of rage, she fled from the room - not because she was afraid he would hit her, but because she didn't want to hit him.

            She ran out into the corridor and straight into Reno. "Hey, steady there, Sticky," he said, catching her as she stumbled and setting her upright.

            She brushed him off with a snarl. "Eavesdropper."

            "The Boss been giving you a hard time?"

            "That's none of your business."

            "Whoa, tetchy. Let me tell you something, sister; you got off lightly in there. When Tseng really wants to haul you over the coals, man, it's third degree burn time. You just got yourself a little singed, that's all."

            "I saved Knives's life and he didn't even say thank you!"

            "Yeah, he's a real ingrate. I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but - you're all right, Sticky. You did good last night. Now come on, I'll make you a coffee. And I'll tell you what: fifty gil says he apologises before the day is out. The man can't handle it when you get pissed at him."

.

            Reno was bang on the money. That afternoon Tseng summoned her back to his office. He invited her to sit, but she refused, and so he did not sit either. They stood facing each other across his desk, neither of them quite meeting the other's eyes.

            "I was wrong to speak to you the way I did," he began with stiff formality. "The concern I feel for your well-being in no way justifies the tone I took with you. If it hadn't been for you, I would have lost a Turk yesterday, and we would all have felt the pain of that. I'm sorry I lost my temper. It's not - well, it's not a side of myself I'm proud of. I hope you can accept my apology."

            Aeris had half a mind to make him sweat a bit longer - but when he opened his top drawer, took out a small shagreen jewellery box, and said, "I have a present for you," she forgot she was nursing a grudge against him and cried out, "Oh, what is it?"

            " I was going to give it to you for Winterfest. But in light of what happened yesterday, I thought maybe you should have it now. Open it."

            The lid bore the name of the most exclusive jeweller in Midgar. Inside, nestled among folds of pale blue silk, were two gold drop earrings. One was set with a white pearl. The other contained - "Mum's materia!" she exclaimed, holding it up to catch the light.

            "You always used to wear it in your hair," he said.

            "When my hair was long. It's too short now."

            "Not _too_ short. I think it suits you. I mean - " he went on hastily - "That materia is important to you; I wanted you to be able to wear it. I suppose it was a bit presumptuous of me; I should have asked your permission - "

            "No, no, no," she cried, "It's perfect, it's beautiful, I love it!"

            "Maybe you'll be able to discover what it's for, now."

            "Oh, it's not for anything. It's just pretty."

            "Every materia does something."

            "Not this one. It's a memory of my mother, that's all." She was pulling out the silver studs from her ears. "Oh, look how my hands are shaking. Help me put them in."

            Holding the earring with the materia in one hand, he took hold of her earlobe with the other, pinching it delicately between his thumb and forefinger to stretch the little hole. At his touch, a delicious sensation, like goosebumps but much, much nicer, shivered through her ear and up across her scalp and down her spine to the soles of her feet; the whole left side of her face was tingling, and all she could think of was how glorious it would feel to have him run his fingers through her hair.

            Abruptly he let go. "I can't - "

            The earring fell onto the floor. "Damn," he said, crouching down to retrieve it, "Clumsy fingers. I'm no good at this - "

            The ringing of his phone caused them both to jump. Tseng stood up too fast, banging his head on the underside of the desk. Aeris winced for him.

            The Old Man was on the line. Aeris couldn't hear what he was saying, but he didn't sound pleased. Tseng made noncommittal noises. When he hung up, he told her, "The President wants to see me in his office right away."

            "It's nothing bad, I hope?"

            "It won't be good. I'm never quite sure when I go up there if I'll be coming down again - That was a joke," he added quickly, seeing her face fall.

            She knew it was no joke. Over the last few weeks the levels of tension in the office had been rising exponentially. The Turks had been skating on thin ice ever since Cissnei's abortive mission to recapture Zack at Nibelheim, a failure for which Tseng had publicly disciplined her, but which he had privately approved. Their poorly-disguised reluctance to take part in the subsequent manhunt, combined with the lack of enthusiasm they displayed for the task of finding and executing their previous Commander, was inevitably causing the Old Man to question their usefulness. In fact, Aeris marvelled that they had managed to get away with their insubordination for as long as they had, and had once remarked on this to Cissnei, wondering aloud if perhaps they had some kind of secret hold on the President.

            "Oh, don't you worry about us," said Cissnei. "We have leverage. Lots of leverage. Cast iron and gold plated, born with a silver spoon in its mouth and all."

            Aeris had wanted to ask her what she meant, but was interrupted by Reno chucking a crunched-up ball of paper at Cissnei's head. The Pits had quickly degenerated into a paper snowball fight, and after that, the chance to ask had never come again.

            She remained in Tseng's room for a while after he had gone, gazing out the window at the neon brilliance of the city below, bathed in the twilight glow of the reactors and reflecting on the events of the day. She was beginning to understand why he'd been so angry with her.  If the Old Man ever found out she was hiding here, it would be the end. Not only her life, and not only Tseng's, were on the line, but the lives of the entire department, these people she had grown to think of as her friends. What good would it do to save one of them, if she brought about the downfall of them all?

            "Oi, Sticky," Reno called to her as he passed the open door, "Don't forget you owe me fifty gil."


	5. Chapter 5

            On the 7th November, Pieter Veld, the Turks' ex-Commander, was arrested in Corel by a platoon of soldiers under the commander of Director Scarlet, and charged with treason. Within minutes of this news reaching Midgar, the Turks' floor was a ghost town. They simply melted away, as if they'd been rehearsing against this eventuality for months - which, indeed, they had. Tseng, the captain of their ship, and Aeris were the last to leave. She dressed herself in the clothes he had given her (baggy jeans, a cheap shapeless hoodie, a ginger wig) and went to find him in his office, where he was putting the finishing to his own disguise: faded brown corduroy trousers and a polyester shirt, a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, and a convincing false moustache with a hint of grey. He coiled his hair under a black homburg hat, and donned a pair of tinted glasses. "Before we go," he said, "There's someone I want you to meet."

            He led the way to the forbidden door. Aeris's heart began to pound with foreboding. That locked door represented for her aspects of the Turks that she preferred not to acknowledge.  Whatever was kept inside, she didn't want to see it. But she knew she had no choice.

            He unlocked the door and stood aside. "Go in."

            Skin prickling with fear, she hesitated. Tseng had always been adamant that she should stay out of this place, yet now he was insisting she enter. Their situation must be dire indeed.

            "They're coming," he said. "Hurry."

            Aeris stepped across the threshold into a corridor no different from the one she had left behind, though less brightly lit. Tseng locked the door behind them. He pocketed the key, drew his gun - and startled her by taking her hand. For a few breathless moments, nothing else registered. His palm was cool and dry, his fingers sinewy, his grip firm but not crushing, and there was something altogether so reassuring about the way his big, capable hand completely enfolded hers that she found she couldn't be afraid any more.

            As they approached the end of the corridor, Tseng took out his PHS and keyed in a series of numbers. The wall in front of them slid sideways about two feet, allowing them to pass through in single file. Tseng made sure the wall closed behind them. Twelve steps down a metal stairway led to another door. Still holding her hand, Tseng opened it and led her inside.

            The room they entered was about twenty feet square. The first thing Aeris saw was a flickering green light coming from a wall of monitors. The second thing she saw was a man dressed all in white - a young man with blue eyes, ridiculously handsome, his blond hair combed back from his forehead, his face instantly recognisable to anyone who'd ever read a newspaper or thumbed through a glossy magazine. He was supposed to be travelling overseas on an extended business trip. What was he doing back in Midgar? What was he doing _here_?

Tseng said, "This is Vice-President Rufus Shinra."

            "Yes," said Aeris, "I can see that."

            The heir to the Shinra empire came forward, hand outstretched. "Miss Gainsborough, it's a pleasure to meet you at last. I can't tell you how happy I am to see you alive and well."

            He knew her name. He knew who she was. How did he know that? Tseng must have told him. Why? Tseng was supposed to be hiding her from the Shinra. What was going on that she didn't know about?

            Tseng was still holding her hand. He gave it a squeeze and said, "It's all right. He's a friend."

            "I don't suppose you remember me," said Rufus Shinra.

            She glanced from his face to Tseng's. "From when you were children," Tseng explained. "You played together a few times, when, ah, circumstances allowed."

            "When the Old Man's back was turned is what he means," said Rufus. "I don't  blame you for forgetting. I imagine neither of us cherish fond memories of our childhood in this building. You escaped, whereas I - was less fortunate. And yet you returned, and of your own free will, Tseng tells me. And you've become quite the Turk. I envy you."

            "I'm not a real Turk."

            "Nor am I, more's the pity.  But in this world very few are lucky enough to do what they want.  The rest of us - " his gaze moved to Tseng, and his mouth twitched - "We do our duty, don't we, Tseng?"

            "If I don't come back," said Tseng, "Reeve will know where to find her."

            "You will come back."

            Aeris was struck by the complete absence of doubt in the Vice-Presidence's tone. Was it because he was used to getting everything he wanted? Did he think he just had to speak, and it would be so? She wished she could feel half as certain.

            "Miss Gainsborough," said Rufus, "I look forward to meeting you again soon, under more auspicious circumstances. We have much to talk about. In the meantime, stay safe. And Tseng - "

            "Yes?"

            "I won't let you down, I promise."

.

            By devious means (including, but not limited to, ventilation shafts, back staircases, and a service lift) Tseng and Aeris escaped the Shinra Building and blended with the nightlife of Loveless Avenue. She clung to his hand with all her might. In this crowd, and with him in that disguise, if she lost sight of him she might never find him again. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but he gave her no chance, hurrying her along at a pace that made it hard to catch her breath.

            Finally, as they turned off the main street into a quieter lane, she dug her heels in. Tseng wheeled round to look at her in surprise and, it must be said, some irritation. She didn't care. "I want to know what's going on, Tseng."

            "Aeris, please. Time is short - "

            "If you're in such a hurry, then you need to start talking to me, because I am not budging another step until you give me an explanation."

            He saw she meant it. "All right. Let's keep moving. I'll explain as we go."

            The first part of what he told her came as no surprise: the moment she'd heard about the old Commander's arrest she had known the Turks would stop at nothing to save him. And Rufus Shinra was helping them; that much was obvious. She could guess at his reasons. In a power struggle, who wouldn't want the Turks on their side? 

            "As you know," said Tseng, "The reason Commander Veld left Shinra four years ago was to search for his daughter, who had fallen under the influence of a terrorist organisation - "

            "Avalanche," said Aeris.

            "Yes. Well, Avalanche have acquired a summons materia of unknown magnitude, and all our intelligence suggests that they are planning to unleash it somewhere in the vicinity of Midgar within the next forty-eight hours. We think we know how to prevent that summons from being summoned. Most of the team are out there now, looking for it. Unfortunately, the Old Man has issued a PNG order - "

            "What's that?"

            " _Persona non grata_. Turks aren't welcome in Midgar just now. However, with Rufus's help, I believe that if we can be seen to put an end to the Avalanche threat, the Old Man will rescind his order and welcome us back to the fold. We are, after all, quite useful."

            They had come into a residential area close to the Sector One reactor. Two rows of neat greystone townhouses, four stories high, with sash windows and brass doorknockers, lined the street. "Here we are," said Tseng, stopping in front of a flight of steps that led up to a door exactly the same as all the others.  "These are good people. You'll be safe here."

            He was planning to drop her on some stranger's doorstep like a foundling child, like an inconvenient package?  "I don't want to be _safe_ ," she cried, snatching her hand from his. "I want to do my share. If the city's in danger, I can help. You know I can."

            "Aeris..." He turned around to face her, put a hand on each of her shoulders. "I know that what I'm asking isn't easy. Sitting on the sidelines doesn't come naturally to you. But it's what I need you to do.  My team is stretched to the limit. You have to keep yourself safe. That's your job right now. My job is to try to get the others through this in one piece, and I can't do my job if I'm worrying about you."

            "Don't you worry about the others?"

            "That's different -" He broke off abruptly.

            "Why? Why is it different?" 

            She didn't know what she expected him to say. The obvious answer was that the others were Turks and she was not; their job was to protect her, and hers was to be protected. He didn't say this. The less obvious answer was that of course he worried about them too; he cared for all his underlings equally. But he didn't give her this answer either. He didn't give her any answer at all. He only looked away into the distance, his eyes unreadable."If all goes to plan, I should be back for you within a week," he said.

            "And if it doesn't?"

            The door at the top of the steps opened, casting a rectangle of light across their faces. A woman appeared in the doorway. She looked too old to be middle aged, yet too young to be old. "You two have been standing there a while," she said. "Are you lost?"

            Tseng tugged on Aeris's arm. Since she didn't want to make a show of herself in the middle of street, she had no choice but to follow his lead. The woman watched them come up the steps, with a friendly, puzzled, and slightly wary look on her face.

            "Miss Ruvie, it's me, Tseng," he said, keeping his voice low. "Tseng of the Turks. I believe Reeve told you I was coming?"

            "Well I never!" The woman smiled, deep wrinkles creasing her eyes and mouth. "I thought there for a moment you were my old geography teacher. And you, my dear - " she took Aeris's hand - "Must be Firaga. Come in, come in. I'll put the kettle on."         

.

            Tseng didn't stay, of course. He was gone before the kettle had time to boil. Aeris thought about leaving, too; thought about it hard. Now was her chance, while Miss Ruvie was in the kitchen filling the teapot. She could ease open the sash window, climb out and creep after him... Or run the other way, hop a train to the slums and find Cissnei and Knives and the others...  

            The old Aeris wouldn't have hesitated. The old Aeris did as she pleased, without worrying whether she might be causing Tseng inconvenience or making his job more difficult - and if she was, well, that was his problem. Shinra was the one paying his salary. It wasn't like she'd _asked_ him to be her bodyguard.

            She'd never asked to be a Cetra, either.

            _In this life, very few people get to do what they want...._

Peculiar words from a Vice-President's mouth. Rufus Shinra, the object of universal envy and admiration, young, handsome, popular, with all the money in the world... But there was one thing he didn't have, and it was the same thing she didn't have: the freedom to choose their own path through life. Rufus's destiny was to rule the Company. From the moment he was born, Turks had shadowed his every footsteps. It occurred to her that she was probably the only other person in the world who knew exactly what that felt like.

            Yet it seemed to her that what he'd been saying was that this didn't make them special. Quite the opposite: it made them like everyone else. Very few people got to do what they wanted; most people did what they had to do. You played the cards you were dealt. You paid the debts you'd inherited. You did your duty.

            Living with the Turks, Aeris had learnt a lot about what it meant to do one's duty.

.

            Miss Ruvie and her husband, Mr Stuart, treated her more like a daughter than a guest.  No one could have been kinder. They gave her various tasks around the house, for which she was grateful: keeping busy helped take her mind off her fears. Otherwise, the waiting would have been intolerable.

            The Tuestis were old-fashioned folk. Despite being retired, Mr Stuart went out every day at nine o'clock sharp, either to the library to the read the newspapers or to his men's club to play cards, while Ruvie stayed home, cleaned, washed, cooked, sewed, distributed cookies to the children of the neighbourhood and inviting the other housewives round for tea. Both of them seem perfectly content with this distribution of labour. Aeris, all of twenty-two years old and on fire for adventure, wondered sometimes why they didn't find all this cosy domesticity a little boring - and yet, there was something about the old couple that made her heart ache with nostalgia for a life she hadn't even lived yet.  Every night when he came through the door Mr Stuart would call out, "Where's my best girl?" and Miss Ruvie would come running to kiss him on the lips. They'd been married fourty-two years, they told her.

            _When I'm old like they are_ , she decided, _I want to have what they have._

            The day after she arrived at their house, Aeris was surprised to discover the back yard contained a small patch of real earth. Her fingers itched at the sight. It was the only honest-to-goodness soil she'd seen since coming to the plate. The parks and children's playgrounds of the upper city were turfed with artificial grass.

            "I wanted a little patch of home," Miss Ruvie sighed. "We were farmers, back in the North Grasslands. Fruit trees, mostly, apples, pears, cherries. I had the loveliest garden. You'd never believe it to look at that sorry sight, but my tomatoes won the blue ribbon at the village fete for ten years running. I've planted courgettes in there, runner beans, broad beans, carrots, you name it. Even rocket, and you know that stuff will grow anywhere. But not here." It was clear she'd given up on her garden.

            When Miss Ruvie went back inside, Aeris crouched on the edge of the garden, raking her fingers through the cold dry earth. It was almost dead. _Almost._ A glimmer of life remained: her fingers prickled in response to its presence. With a little effort, she could coax Miss Ruvie's seeds to grow. It would be her way of thanking the Tuestis for their kindness. Tseng wouldn't like it - but he was the one who had told her to do her job, and what was a Cetra's job, if not to bring life to barren places?

.

            She'd have to be clever about it, though. So she let herself out the back gate when Ruvie wasn't looking and went down the street to the pharmacy on the corner, where, since she had no money, she let a potion fall into her pocket while distracting the assistant behind the counter with her most dazzling smile. Back at the house she found a plastic watering can in the garden shed. "My mother had an old trick for making plants grow in Midgar," she told Ruvie. "Put a little potion in the water. You only need a drop. Go on, try it."

            As soon as Aeris woke the next morning she ran to the window and looked out. Sure enough, overnight a dozen seedlings had poked their heads through the earth. The soil itself looked darker, richer, sweeter.

            From the kitchen window below her came the sound of Ruvie laughing in delight.

.          

            "Ah," Miss Ruvie sighed that evening, as she and Aeris did the washing-up together. "If only my son would bring home a girl like you, I think I could die happy."

            "Any girl at all would be an improvement," shouted Mr Stuart from his easy chair in the sitting-room. He was watching the nine o'clock SIN news broadcast. "You'll wait in vain, Roo. That boy's married to his job."

            _Yes,_ thought Aeris, _I know someone else like that._

            "I don't understand it," said Ruvie. "He's such a nice mannerly boy. Good with hands. And very successful. You'd think he was the answer to a maiden's prayer. How hard can it be for him to find himself a wife? I do think he could try to make the effort. None of us are getting any younger, and I'd like to see my grandchildren before I die - "

            "Look out the window," Stuart interrupted. "Now." He sounded different - alarmed - no, excited. Aeris and Ruvie dashed to the kitchen window and looked up. The moon - or rather, the moon's white glow, diffused through boiling clouds of mako - had swollen to a vast size, brighter than she'd ever seen it, and was moving across the sky with the speed of a bird.

            "That's not the moon," cried Mr Stuart from his post at the sitting room window. "What is that?"

            "A shooting star," said Ruvie. "But what a big one! Quick, make a wish, Firaga."

            The wish was already in her heart. _Please let him be all right_.

            That shining glow was the summons, she was sure of it.

            Already its light was fading, like a spark thrown up by a fire, quenched in the cold night air.  Did that mean the Turks had defeated it? She opened the kitchen door and ran out into the garden, knelt on the ground, dug her fingers into the reawakened earth. _What's happening? Tell me!_

            The planet didn't answer. It didn't know. All it knew was its own pain, and even that was barely audible, muffled by layers of steel and concrete and fifty metres of empty air.

            If he died she would feel it, she _knew_ she would. She had felt Zack's passing: a ripple in the planet's consciousness, the echo of her name. She would feel his. All she had to do was keep her hands in the earth and concentrate...

            Miss Ruvie and Mr Stuart called for her to come in. You'll get cold, they said. But she couldn't. Not until she knew.  Miss Ruvie brought her a cup of sweet tea and Mr Stuart put a blanket round her shoulders. She couldn't have said what time she fell asleep. In her sleep she dreamed that she was back in her church, and Tseng was there, picking flowers to put in her basket. When she reached out to touch him, like a dead monster he dissolved in a swirl of mako. Her cry of horror woke her up. It was dawn; the clouds that shrouded Midgar were fire-red, but the city was still standing, and a ladybug was spreading its wings on the back of her hand.

.

            The previous's night unique meteorological phenomena was the lead story on the SIN breakfast show. Apparently snow had fallen while she'd been sleeping, an unprecedented occurrence. In other news, the anchor reported that the discredited former chief of Shinra's department of Administrative Research had been executed for treason, together with the former ringleader of the terrorist cell known as Avalanche.

            So he'd failed.  She ached for his loss. Commander Veld had been a father to him, and had tried to be a friend to her mother, though that effort too had ended in failure. His pain was her pain; she couldn't rest or sit still or eat. The news made no mention of him or his Turks. All she knew for sure was that he wasn't dead.

            The day passed in an agony of waiting. She stayed outside, wrapped in Mr Staurt's blanket, shivering with exhaustion, palms pressed into the earth, afraid of what it might communicate to, yet desperate to know. Every moment that passed in silence was another moment of reprieve. 

            Miss Ruvie brought her meals. They asked no questions. She loved them for it.

            Night fell. He was still alive, and so was hope. Maybe everything would be all right. Her eyelids were drooping. Perhaps she should go to bed. He wouldn't be happy if she made herself sick for his sake -

            The back door creaked opened. "That was our Reeve on the phone just now," said Mr Stuart. "He told me to tell you, 'All's well'."


	6. Chapter 6

            Another day passed, and another, and another, adding up to almost a week, and still he hadn't come for her. Aeris tried to be patient. He would have his reasons, good ones; she needed to respect that. If only she knew what they were...

            In her lowest moments she suspected him of having decided to leave her with the Tuestis permanently. It made sense: she was probably safer here than in the Shinra building, and with so many demands on his time he might be happy to let someone else shoulder the duty of watching over her.

            But then she remembered the look on his face when he gave her the earring containing her mother's materia - how he'd held her hand so gently, yet so firmly, as they fled the office - the way just touching him had drawn all the fear out of her. Again and again she returned to their last, unfinished conversation, when he'd implied that his feelings for her were different from the concern he felt for the other Turks under his command. He'd really said that. It wasn't her imagination.

            _If he comes for me_ , she told herself, _it means he loves me. If he sends someone else..._

Whenever she wasn't busy with her chores, she would curl up in the window seat looking out onto the street, watching, waiting, hoping. That was where she was sitting at 11.15 on a Tuesday night, when the peace of their quiet residential quarter was shattered by a muffled _boom_ coming from the direction of the Number One Reactor. The house shook, trembling from its foundations to its rafters; the pictures rocked on their hooks; the cutlery rattled in its drawer; two of Ruvie's prized porcelain dogs toppled from the shelves to smash on the floor. Plaster rained from the ceiling, and the window she was leaning against cracked from top to bottom.

            "Earthquake!" Mr Stuart shouted. "Get out, get out - " He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her after him. Miss Ruvie, still wearing her apron, was right behind them. They fell against the front door: it was jammed. Mr Stuart used his shoulders to force it open, and all three of them ran out into the street, where all their neighbours were gathering, some already in their pyjamas, their faces stricken with wonder and fear. Beyond the rooftops, she saw flames and thick black smoke towering above the reactor. How could this have been an earthquake? They were fifty metres off the ground.

            "Firaga, you're bleeding," Ruvie cried.

            People were screaming.  People were hurt. Her hands grew hot; she looked down and saw that her fingertips were glowing green. Quickly she balled them into fists, not wanting anyone to see. Where there were wounds, a Cetra's duty was to heal. Time was of the essence: that was what Tseng would say. Pushing Ruvie away, she began to run in the direction of the reactor.

.

            An entire residential block had been reduced to smouldering rubble. Smoke drifted in layers; it was hard to make out the reactor, but from what she could see, it looked to have fallen in on itself.  The dead and dying lay everywhere.  How many she saved, she couldn't say: the energy simply radiated out from her in all directions, like light from a light bulb, healing, she supposed, everyone it touched. The effort was exhausting. She staggered and had to sit down.

            A familiar figure appeared in the smoke: purple-blue military uniform, studded shoulder epaulettes, baggy trousers, the standard issue sword on his back. He was the first Shinra official to appear on the scene. For one mad second she thought Zack had returned from the dead, but this SOLDIER was much shorter and had blond hair. He would have walked past without seeing her if she hadn't stretched out a hand to him. "Thank god you're here," she said. "What happened?"

            His blue eyes were the same as Zack's. No, they weren't. They looked right through her, as if she wasn't there - or as if he wasn't. Was he in shock?

            "Nothing," he said in a flat voice. He looked straight at her. His pupils widened; she saw herself come into focus. "Hey - listen -"

            "What?"

            As suddenly as she had claimed his attention, she lost it. His gaze wandered away. "Nothing....."

            He turned from her and started running in the direction of Fountain Square. "Hey!" she called after him, "Where are you going? These people need help!" but he disappeared around the corner without once looking back.

            Someone nearby was crying for help. Wearily she got to her feet. An injured woman had been trapped by a falling billboard. Aeris strained to lift it off her. If only that SOLDIER had stayed, he could have helped. Zack would have stayed. _Protector of the weak, a hero to children -_

She gave one last heave, drawing on the reserves of her energy. It failed. She had nothing left. Her throat was sore. Her legs could not hold up her any longer. Her eyes grew dark. So, this was what dying felt like....

_._

            Someone was shaking her shoulder. "Let me sleep," she complained.

            "Aeris, it's me." She could barely hear him; his voice was a whisper, meant for her ears only. She smiled.

            "Tseng. You came."

            "I knew I'd find you in the thick of it. Let's get you up - "

            She hadn't realised how cold she was until he put his arms around her. Gently he helped her sit upright, and gladly she rested against his chest. "Drink this," he said, holding a plastic bottle to her lips. "What is it?" she asked.

            "An elixir."

            Fiery, bitter-sweet, it warmed her going down, and the warmth spread to every part of her body. Strength returned to her limbs. She felt she could stand - but perhaps not just yet. Let her luxuriate in this happiness just a little longer, cradled in his arms.

            It was not to be. "We have to get you out of here," he said. "Can you walk?"

            She opened her eyes. Rescue workers in bright orange vests were crawling over heaps of broken bricks and splintered beams that had once been the Goblins Bar. Emergency vehicles flashed their blue lights. She caught a glimpse of a familiar red head, long tail of hair snaking across his suited shoulders, directing a squadron of soldiers. "Did the reactor explode?" she asked.

            "It was a bomb.  Come on, we need to get you changed."

            The elixir had done its work: she felt as good as new. Instead of taking her back to Miss Ruvie's house Tseng led her to the public toilets behind Robsons supermarket, where first aiders had set up a triage station. He handed her a small duffle bag and told her to change in the ladies' washroom. The bag contained her suit. She smiled; if Tseng thought it was safe for her to wear the blue, that could only mean the Turks were back in favour. Once she was dressed, she turned to assess herself in the mirror, and saw that her face was coated with blood and soot. It took a while to wash it all off.

            "That's better," said Tseng when she emerged. He leaned towards her, and for one heart-stopping moment she thought he was going to take her face in his hands. But he only straightened her tie. 

            Swallowing her disappointment, she said, "I saw Reno. How are the others? Are they okay?"

            "Yes -"

            "And Miss Ruvie and Mr Stuart? I think their house was wrecked."

            Tseng looked left and right. "I'll answer all your questions, but not here, and not now. Go to the Sector One station and wait for me at the all night cafe."

            "I can't just go - people are injured - "

            "The medics will take care of them. You've done more than your share. Here," he pressed some gil into her palm, "Get something to eat, before you pass out. And please, Aeris, wait for me."

.

            Two hours she waited. The streets were over-run with PSM and SOLDIER, the station likewise. She felt dangerously conspicuous, sitting at a cafe table in her Turk suit as if she had nothing better to do, while all around her the city heaved in turmoil. One could only make a coffee last so long. After a while she went into the newsagents next door and bought a pen and a pad of paper, so that she could pretend to be writing a report.  But nobody challenged her; they were, she guessed, too busy with their own duties to bother a Turk who seemed preoccupied with hers.

            At last he arrived, looking untypically dishevelled, his face streaked with ash, his hair coming loose from its leather tie. At the sight of him her heart leapt into her throat; she could hardly speak for happiness.

            He smiled at her. It made him look tired. "Thank you," he said, as he slid into the seat beside her.

            "What for?"

            "For being here. I was afraid you wouldn't be. That took rather longer than I expected."

            She wanted to say, _I would wait for you forever_. She wanted to say, _Wherever you are is where I want to be._ What she said was, "Where would I go?"

            He looked at his hands. The cuffs of his white shirt were stained with blood. "Did you catch the people who did it?" If that was their blood, she couldn't find it in her to feel sorry for them.

            "No," he said. "But we know who they are. We have people on it. We won't let this happen again."

            "Was it Avalanche?"

            "They call themselves Avalanche. But as Reno says, nowadays every lunatic with a grudge against Shinra is calling himself Avalanche. The real Avalanche is finished. We made sure of that."

            She wondered when he'd last got some rest. He sounded so weary. His hands lay on the tablecloth, scratched and sooty with dirty, broken nails. Had he been digging people out of the rubble? She put her hand over his. He raised his eyes to look at her, and she was filled with the longing to kiss those tired eyelids. "I'm so sorry about your Commander," she said. "I know you did everything you could to save him."

            A faint smile, the merest hunt of smugness, touched his lips. "We did save him."

            She blinked. "But - how? They said on the news he was executed."

            A waitress appeared at their table, and her answer had to wait until she'd taken Tseng's order. As briefly as possible - for the story was complicated, and he was worn out, and his throat was dry - he summed up what had happened since he'd left her at the Tuestis. While the rest of the Turks had been busy taking down Avalanche's summons, he, Rude, and Reno had helped Veld escape from his prison in the slums, only to be stopped when they were halfway across the badlands by a platoon of heavily-armed infantrymen under orders to arrest them. Reno was ready to fight back, but before he could get himself or anyone else killed a second group of soldiers arrived with new orders from the President, promising to pardon the Turks if Tseng would personally shoot Veld and his mortally-ill daughter. This turn of events came as no surprise to Tseng, since he and Rufus had planned it between them: Rufus was the one who had persuaded his father to give the Turks another chance. So Tseng had faked Veld's execution -

            "How did you do that?"

            "Three Turks disguised as infantrymen, a borrowed army truck, and plenty of phoenix down and elixirs. It wasn't difficult. The hard part was keeping it secret from Reno and Rude. They thought I'd really killed him."

            "Oh, Tseng." She squeezed his hand. "Where is he now?"

            "I don't know. Gone to earth. He's an old fox, he has a hundred hiding places."

            Upon returning to the Shinra building, with the President's pardon in his pocket, Tseng was arrested and put on trial for his life. Then, in the very moment when he thought all was lost, Rufus had broken into the boardroom, flanked by Rude and Reno, demanding to know why the Old Man was reneging on his promise.      _Tseng's life is forfeit_ , his father replied. _You can make do with the others_.

            _But they're all dead_ , Rufus had retorted without missing beat. _They gave their lives defending your company from Avalanche_.

            "They're not, are they?" said Aeris.

            "It was all he could think of on the spur of the moment. The Old Man couldn't go back on his word after that. I'm not happy about it, but I've accepted the situation."

            "You really _are_ an ingrate," she said, half laughing. "I'll have to thank Rufus for you the next time I see him."

            "The way I see it, this may all work out for the best. Right now they might actually be more useful to me dead than alive."

            The waitress returned with his order: black coffee and a spiced pumpkin scone.  "I am _starving_ ," he said, picking up his fork. "I can't remember the last time I ate - " and once again she had to wait patiently while he wolfed the scone, washing it down with gulps of hot coffee. This was a side of him she'd never really seen before, unwashed, unbrushed, hungry, garrulous, punch-drunk with fatigue. "You're so - " she began.

            "What?" he said through a mouthful of scone.

            _Real_ , was what she wanted to say. _Alive._

            "Human." Though that wasn't really any better.

            He swallowed the lump of scone. " 'We are all men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.' "

            "Is that poetry?"

            "Loveless. Genesis was always quoting it at to Sephiroth. 'Few are angels'. Funny. Here's one sitting right beside me."

            Aeris didn't know where to look. She could feel her cheeks turning red. It was partly Tseng she felt embarrassed for; it was an awfully cheesy thing to say. And yet she couldn't wish he hadn't said it.

            Draining his coffee, he set the cup down and promptly burst her bubble. "That's what the press are calling you. 'Midgar's Healing Angel'. 'Mystery Angel of Mercy'. They were all over the site, looking for leads on you. Asking if anyone knew who you were. Offering a thousand gil for a picture. I only hope nobody took one. I confiscated every camera I could find, but...."

            Was he angry with her? He didn't sound angry; he sounded flat, as if this were just one more thing in a long list of things to worry about. Yet what else could she have done? "Is that why you were gone so long?"

            "Partly. I wasn't happy about leaving you on your own here, but I thought the suit would be an adequate cover in the short term. People don't normally associate Turks with healing."

            "If you're expecting an apology, you're going to be disappointed. People are alive because of me."

            His laugh was a dry croak. "Believe me, Aeris, an apology is the last thing I expect. You did what you had to do, I understand that." He paused, and added, "As must I."

            Her heart sank. "Are you sending me back to them?"

            "The Tuestis? I wish I could, but their house is on the verge of collapse. Director Tuesti has booked them into a hotel. No, I'll have to take you back to the Shinra Building. "

            "How? Aren't I supposed to be dead?"

            "Aeris, the President has given me the order to bring you in."

            An old fear knotted in her stomach. The monster under the bed that had haunted her childhood was putting its claws out for her at last; she'd been foolish to think she was safe. She couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. But no: Tseng wouldn't do that to her. _Would_ he?  No. No, he wouldn't. She knew he wouldn't. She _knew_ him.

            "Why now?" she managed to whisper.

            "This latest bombing has hit too close to home. He wants you somewhere secure. As do I, of course. I'll have to mount and search and then tell him I can't find you." Tseng paused, thinking. "You used to sell your flowers at the corner by the Goblins Bar, didn't you? I'll remind him of that. It was completely destroyed in the blast."

            "You'll let him think I was killed?"

            "A simple yet elegant solution."

            "But... won't he be furious with you?"

            "I'll survive. Probably." He gave her a fleeting smile.

            "Do you really think it's a good idea for me to go back in the building?"

            "No, I don't. I'm not saying this is a good idea; I'm saying it's the best I have. I need you where I can see you and there is nowhere else. It won't be for long. Only until I can think of something better."

.

On any ordinary night, nothing stirred in the Shinra Building at one o'clock in the morning but security staff, cleaners, Turks, rats, and the occasional salaryman pulling an all-nighter. Tonight, however, the place was a hive of activity: UrbDev engineers assessing the damage to the city's infrastructure; accountants from Finance calculating the costs of repairs and drafting proposals for rate hikes; PR hacks issuing anodyne press releases to assure the public that Shinra had everything under control; and soldiers, soldiers everywhere, milling about rather aimlessly in the lobby and on the mezzanine stairs. Security was on high alert. Tseng gave her his keycard and told her to go round the back and take the second service lift. She passed a number of people, all hurry here and there, but only bumped into one person who recognised her: Gary the handsome post-room boy, who dropped the mailbag he was holding and exclaimed, "Hey, it's you - "

            "Sssh." She tapped her finger with her nose. "Don't breathe a word." The lift doors hissed open. She stepped inside. "This is Turk business. Tell no one. Understood?"

            The boy turned pale. "Yes, I won't - I mean, I do - "

            Her ride proceeded without interruption as far as the tenth floor. Here the lift stopped. She braced herself for the worst, but it was Tseng coming to join her. Riding up to the 46th floor felt like coming home. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but before she could speak, the lift doors opened, and a strange blond girl sitting at the duty desk leapt to her feet with such alacrity that she knocked her chair over. "Dammit!" she cried. "Sorry, Mr Tseng, sorry, sir." She was wearing the plain Shinra logo tie that the Turks reserved for their rookies.

            "Elena," said Tseng, "This is - actually, it doesn't matter who this is, because she's not here and you never saw her."

            "I don't know what you're talking about, sir," the girl answered gamely. "There's nobody here but you and me, sir." She gazed at him with big, adoring brown eyes, as if she wished it were true. Aeris felt her wolfish hackles rise.

            "Who is that girl?" she asked him as they hurried down the corridor.

            "Gun's sister. For obvious reasons, we're short-handed; I needed to recruit someone fast and she was my best option. She was top of her class at the academy, and she knows how this department operates."

            "Wasn't that lucky," said Aeris drily.

            He led her through the forbidden door, along the secret corridor and down the hidden stairs to the room where she had, so briefly and so strangely, met and spoken to Rufus Shinra a week ago. It was, she now realised, partitioned in half, and the rear half was kitted out like a small apartment: bed, armchair, bookshelves, lamp; kettle, microwave, mini-fridge. Had this all been laid on for her benefit, she wondered, or had others stayed here before her - and if they had, was it for their own protection? Or were they prisoners?

            His phone rang. Reno was on the line. They spoke briefly, and Tseng put the phone away. "They need me back at the site. You have everything you need here. Try to sleep. I'll see you tomorrow."

            "Tseng, wait - "

            He stopped and turned back, a frown marring his brow. She could see his thoughts were already elsewhere. Any other Turk would have got short shrift. But he was always so patient with her. "What is it?"

            "Why did you tell Rufus Shinra my name?"

            His expression didn't change, yet she sensed a wall had gone up, blank, impenetrable. He said, "I can't talk about Rufus with you."

            "But you can talk about me with him? You said nobody outside the department was supposed to know."

            "Aeris, I have to go - "

            "Just tell me, Tseng!"

            He hesitated. She could see from his face that he was wrestling with indecision. Some deep secret lay at the bottom of this - a secret that concerned her.          "Why did he say he hoped we'd meet again soon? What could he and I possibly have to talk about?"

            "All right," he said, throwing a wary glance at the door, though he was the one who had locked it. Coming closer, he kept his voice low. "When you talk to the Planet, what do you hear?"

            She was surprised he should ask this. In the old life, they had spoken of it often, and her answer had always been the same.  "Pain."

            He nodded. "There are many things which are known, which nobody is allowed to acknowledge publicly. My job is to enforce that silence. Do you understand?"

            A chill passed through her. She hugged herself, and nodded.

            Tseng said, "The President thinks the Promised Land will provide the solution. A land flowing with unlimited mako - "

            "He believes that because he wants it to be true. I don't know what the Promised Land is, but I know it's not that."

            "Rufus and his father - " Tseng paused, taking time to choose his words carefully. "The President and the Vice-President disagree on a number of things, including their respective visions for this company's future. Rufus would like to take it in a more - sustainable direction. He thinks you could help him do this."

            "Will I have a choice?"

            That hurt him. He pulled away from her, just a little, pulled into himself; maybe he wasn't even aware that he did this, but she felt it, the cooling of the temperature between them, and _that_ hurt her. The question had been a fair one. 

            "I'm not your jailer," he said.

            "You and he are allies."

            "Yes. And friends."

            "Are you my friend, Tseng?"

            To her astonishment, the skin of his cheeks reddened. Was Tseng - her cold, hard, eminently practical captain of the Turks - _blushing_?

            He couldn't meet her startled eyes. With difficulty, as if something was caught in his throat, he said, "I have never understood why fate put you in my care. You deserve better. I have done my best... I must go now - "

            He turned away from her, crossing to the door in a few long strides, unlocked it, went out, and shut it behind him. She held her breath, but she never heard the key turn. He couldn't have forgotten; he was too meticulous for that. He was making a point. If she walked out now, the girl at the duty desk would not try to stop her - would not even see her go.

            She sat down in the armchair and put her head in her hands.

            Only then did she remember. _If he comes for me, it means that he loves me._

            She would not lose heart. Talking wasn't getting them anywhere, so... She would just have to find another way.


	7. Chapter 7

            A day and a half went by before she saw him again. She tried to make the hours pass faster by reading, or watching TV on one of the monitors in the computer wall. According to the news, the terrorists had tried to bomb another reactor, but this time, thank god, there were no casualities: the plot had been foiled, the reactor staff evacuated ahead of time, and the bomb successfully defused. Fuzzy CCTV footage showed a bulky man in a blue suit, head bald as a brown egg, hunched over the bomb, carefully teasing its wires apart. The scrolling headline proclaimed him a   _Hero of Courage...._

            When Tseng finally reappeared, it was only for a fleeting visit. To her intense disappointment Reno came with him. Both of them walked with a spring in their step, as if a heavy weight had been lifted from their shoulders. "We got good news, Sticky. That terrorist cell? Busted."

            "That's wonderful!"

            "You're telling me. Him upstairs'd got a huge boner on for crushing them, and when I say crushing I mean literally. He wanted Reeve to drop the Sector Seven plate - "

            " _What_?" How was that even possible? Let alone conceivable?

            Reno's finger circled his temple. "Yeah. Talk about taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Gaffer's got a couple of screws loose. What?" he exclaimed when Tseng gave him a pointed look. "It's not like it's a secret."

            "One of them was an old friend of Zack's," Tseng told her. "They escaped from the labs together. We thought he'd died, but apparently not."

            The image came to her mind of a cloud of dust, and out of it a SOLDIER First Class materialising, with too-blue eyes and a vacant, lost expression. Could it have been - ?

            "You wanna hear something really weird?" said Reno. "He fell into your old church."

            She closed her eyes, remembering. The flowers had broken Zack's fall. But the flowers were gone now. "Is he dead?" she asked.

            "In custody," Tseng replied. "All of them."

            Aeris knew what _in custody_ was a euphemism for.  She felt sick. It would have been kinder to kill them outright -  

            But then she remembered the carnage in the streets around the Number One Reactor, the cries of the wounded, the bewilderment of souls that had one moment before been laughing with friends or shopping for dinner and were now slipping away into the lifestream, and she didn't know what to think, or what those responsible for such suffering deserved. If you had no respect for life, how could you expect your own life to be treated with respect?

            Tseng went on, "After we arrested Zack's friend, we picked up one of his associates in Wall Market - "

            "Twin fucking Turbines," said Reno. "Can you believe it? Turns out they're from the same hometown. We should have known she was dodgy when Rude fell for her. I mean, once is bad luck, right? but _twice_ , shit - "

            Tseng silenced him with a look. "She gave us the location of their hideout, a bar in Sector Seven's underplate. A man with a gun-arm was their leader. We arrested him and three others, a woman and two men. As far as we can establish, that's the lot."

            "Yeah," Reno laughed, "We're the Old Man's blue-eyed boys again. For this week, anyway. Next week, who the hell knows."

            "Midgar's safe. That's the important thing," said Aeris with feeling.

            Tseng got to his feet. "Are you going?" she exclaimed. "I mean, you've only just got here. I hoped we could - um, talk?"

            "Heh," laughed Reno. "No rest for the wicked, Sticky, you know that."

            "I have to escort the Vice-President to Junon. I'll be back later tonight, probably after midnight.  While I'm away, Reno's in charge.  If you need anything, talk to him."

            Clearly, there was no chance of putting her plan into operation today. She certainly wasn't going to make the attempt with Reno standing by; the last thing she needed was _his_ running commentary. Aeris stifled her sigh of frustration until they were both out of the room. She'd have to wait another day. But each day felt longer than the one before. At this rate, time might stand still before she could make her feelings known.

.

            It was half past one in the morning. Tseng had not yet returned from Junon, though they expected him any minute. For the last two hours Reno had been down in her room sitting at the bank of computers, flipping through various surveillance channels on the wall monitors before switching over to TV mode to watch a game show.

            "Aren't you ever going to bed?" she asked.

            "Not while I'm on duty." He swivelled round in his chair and leered at her. "Why, you offering?"

            "Fat chance."

            "Yeah, figured. It ain't me you got your Sticky eye on."

            She decided to ignore that.  "What _are_ you doing here?"

            "Working."

            "You could work upstairs."

            "I got bored of tormenting Laney. She makes too easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel. It's no fun for a pro like me. You're more of challenge."

            "Where's Rude?"

            "Out crying into his beer somewhere. The big sap."

            "You don't mean that."

            His pale eyes flashed. She had forgotten he didn't like to be called on his bullshit. "I've got a question for you, Sticky."

            "I guess I can't stop you asking it."

            "This thing you got going for Tseng. Are you just toying with him, or are you serious?"

            She should have known he would notice. Reno like to masquerade as a lazy slob, but he had as sharp an eye as any of them, and was fiercely protective of his Boss - as they all were. There was no point in denying it. He'd only mock her for trying. However, there was no need to give him an answer, either.

            "The reason I ask," he went on, conversationally, "Is 'cause we been through a lot of shit recently and I just don't think he needs to get his heart broken again right now."

 _Again_? What did he mean, _again?_ A flood of jealousy she hadn't known she was capable of feeling surged through her, prickling like pins and needles, submerging common sense. So, Tseng had had his heart broken by some other woman, had he? No, it wasn't possible; Tseng had always belonged to her. When had this happened? How long ago? When he was a boy, maybe? Or - painful thought - just recently? "Who was she?"

            Reno's eyes narrowed. "Are you fucking stupid, or are you just screwing with me?"

            " _Me_?"

            "Give the lady a cigar."

            "You mean - me and Zack - ?"

            "He always thought he wasn't good enough for you. You were too pure for him. He didn't want to get your dress dirty, if you know what I mean."

            "But he and Zack were friends."

            "Well, yeah. There was that. Zack was a good guy. _The_ good guy. And the hero always gets the princess."

            "He never minded me seeing Zack. He never said."

            "Yeah, he wouldn't."

            "But - no, that's can't be true.  I know he's always cared about me, but he didn't - I mean, not then... Not like that. I was just a child to him. A responsibility. I was a precious object he had to make sure didn't get broken. No, you must be wrong, Reno."

            "Right. Sure I am. You just go on believing that. Fucking hell. You two are as bad as each other."

            The door burst open and Elena came running in, breathless and flushed with excitement. "Mr Reno, sir! There's been a breakout on the sixty-seventh floor."

            "Shit - " he spun around in his chair and started scrolling through the monitors. "The prisoners?"

            "No, sir. A lab sample."

            The monitors showed nothing but static. Reno groaned through gritted teeth. "Double shit. Casualities?"

            "I think... Quite a few, sir. It's heading up to the President's floor."

            "Where's the army? Fucking SOLDIER?"

            "They couldn't hold it."

            "Fuck," he said. "Fuck. Okay, listen. Laney, this is what you do. Tseng should be on his way back now, so first you call him and tell him what's happened. Then you call security and tell them to seal off all the floors below the fifty-ninth. Stop all the lifts. We can't have it getting out into the streets. Then you call Rude and tell him to get his arse back up here asap. Sticky, you're coming with me. Go grab your staff. There's injured people up there. We're going to need you."

.

            He was wrong. The dead needed nothing from her. They were all dead, every single person she and Reno came across: the young, curly-haired lab assistants in blood-drenched white coats; the secretaries hacked limb from limb, who'd chosen the wrong night to work overtime; the infantrymen cloven in two down the spine like illustrations in a medical textbook. The smell of blood was overwhelming. She had stop and throw up into a waste-basket.

            "Get it together," Reno snapped. The fear in his voice was the most frightening thing of all. She almost hoped that the thing they were chasing, whatever it was, escaped the building before they caught up with it; but then she thought of the city full of sleeping families, and she knew that she and Reno would have to do whatever it took to stop the beast from getting away.

            The carpet on the stairs to the President's private floor was waterlogged with blood; their Turk boots squelched as they ran up it. At the top of the stairs, Reno froze, throwing out an arm to hold her back.

            "Oh," he said.

            She saw the creature first: black leathery skin, white armour-plated shoulders, a mane of silver hair, and a wing, just one. It seemed to be hovering above a desk awash with blood - no, it was perching on the arms of a chair, and in the chair there was man, an old man in a red suit; she hadn't seen him at first because he was slumped over, dead. The blood was his blood. A sword had been driven between his shoulder blades. The creature was holding it. The creature had hands, black-gloved hands. It wasn't a monster. It was a man, and she recognised him.

            "Sephiroth," breathed Reno.

            His terror was contagious. No one could go against Sephiroth and live. Even Zack, who had wrestled behemoths single-handled, who feared nothing, and who had been Sephiroth's friend, had told her many time that the SOLDIER was indestructible, and it must be true if death itself could not hold him, for here he was, back from the dead to claim the life of the President of Shinra, Inc.

            "Run, Sticky," Reno whispered hoarsely. "I'll hold him off."

            It was the bravest thing she'd ever heard anyone say.

            Sephiroth heard it too.  He raised his head and fixed them with his unblinking gaze. There was something strange about his eyes, but from this distance she couldn't say what, exactly.

            He smiled. Reno's wolfish grin was tame by comparison. "Turks," he said.

            It took her a moment to realise that his lips hadn't moved. The voice was in her head.

            A bolt of lightning flashed: a sword fell clattering the ground. Its point had been inches from Reno's throat; Reno, the fastest of the Turks. He hadn't seen it coming and neither had she, yet she had cast the thundaga: a defensive reflex, the instinct to protect.

            _I know you_ , said the voice in her head.

From his rod Reno threw three fizzing balls of electricity at Sephiroth, who batted them aside while simultaneously raising his left hand to unleash a blast of pure undifferentiated hatred that threw them to their knees. Yet even before she hit the ground she could feel the power welling in her, bathing them both in a green healing light.  Reno, breathing heavily, struggled to his feet, and held out a hand to help her up.

            _You_ , hissed the voice. _Cetra. Wickedness. You buried Mother alive under a mountain of cold rock._

"I don't even know your mother!" she cried.

            "Don't you know your own mother, dear?" Sephiroth had vanished; somehow, Elmyra had taken his place.  Aeris lowered her staff. "Mom?"

            "Come and give me a hug, darling. I've missed you." Not a hair in Elmyra's grey bun was out of place. She wore the same apron she always wore when baking. And she was floating serenely five feet above the ground.

            "Fake!" Aeris shouted, throwing a blast of firaga at it.

            When the smoke cleared, it was Ifalna who stood there with arms outstretched. Aeris reeled in shock. Her mother beamed at her affectionately. "That's my girl. A good daughter knows her real mother. Little one, come here."

            A sob escaped her throat. For years she had dreamed of this. "Mum - "

            Reno caught her arm and hauled her back. "I don't know what you're seeing, but it ain't what I'm seeing," he warned her.

            _Fools_ ss, hissed Ifalna. _Insectsss...._

She struck at Aeris from every side, faster than the eye could follow; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight cuts of the blade, each healing as soon as it was made. But the pain was draining her. In vain Reno tried to capture the moving blur in one of his pyramids of light. When the attack was over, Sephiroth had reclaimed his original shape; Ifalna was nowhere to be seen. Aeris wanted to scream.

            Footsteps came thundering up the stairs behind them. A confusion of strange voices, all shouting and swearing together, broke on her consciousness. She did not dare take her eye off her enemy to see who they were. Someone, a boy by the sound of him, called out "Sephiroth!"

            Sephiroth rose up into the air above the bloody desk, his silver hair fanning out like the frill of an angered lizard. Still he smiled. "Hullo, Cloud."

            With a cry of "Everybody, stand back," the boy rushed at the SOLDIER, holding aloft a standard-issue buster sword just like the one Zack used to carry on his back. It was the same boy she'd seen after the bombing, short, spikey-haired, and suicidally courageous. Without moving a muscle, Sephiroth picked him up and tossed him down the stairs.

            Sephiroth made a slight gesture with his hand.  Aeris felt her balance shifting, as if a rug were being tugged from under her feet. Arms waving, she staggered and fell; they all fell; and the next thing she knew, she was lying between a pair of gigantic paws looking up at the muzzle of a big red dog. It opened its mouth and said, "Are you all right?"

            "Argh!" she cried.

            The newcomers leapt to their feet and began hurling attacks at Sephiroth. Over and over again the boy Sephiroth had called Cloud (Zack's friend! it had to be!) raised his sword and ran forward, only to be rebuffed. A woman with long brown hair, a short leather skirt and steel-capped boots - Twin Turbines? - went in with a flurry of punches and was thrown against the wall. A huge black man with a gatling gun for an arm sprayed bullets indiscriminately, shattering the office windows. The red dog used its teeth and claws. A second woman in a breastplate was casting Ice, and two men, one fat, one with a bandana around his hair, picked up anything they could find and threw it. Reno was still firing round after round of electrical bolts. None of these attacks had any effect on Sephiroth; he either knocked them aside or absorbed them. The fixed smile on his face never faltered.

            Without warning, the light in the room _flipped_ ; Aeris could make sense of it no other way. Somehow Sephiroth had turned light itself inside-out. The effect was like that of a photo negative: all that was bright turned to darkness, and all that was dark became light. The teeth and eye-whites of her companions shone a luminous black. One by one they hit the floor, felled by a barrage of dark energy orbs dropping from the ceiling. Soon, Aeris was the last one standing, and less than a minute later she was on her knees, feeling the strength draining from her.

            _Mum!_ she cried inwardly, in desperation, _help me!_

 _Summon Holy_ , Ifalna answered in her true voice, calm, warm, reassuring, a million miles removed from the hissing venom of the phantom mother Sephiroth had created.

 _Do_ _what? How I'm not a summoner.. I'm only half a Cetra, I don't know how to do anything -_

 _Stop that at once,_ Ifalna rebuked her. _Just_ _concentrate. He's gathering his strength for another attack. That will take him, oh, at least ten seconds. All the time in the world, if you don't panic._

_I don't understand! What's 'holy'? I don't have it._

_Darling, you must have it. I gave it to you._

Aeris's earlobe was beginning to itch - burn, almost. Without thinking, she rubbed it.

            _My earring!_

            _That was clever,_ said Ifalna.

            _It was Tseng's idea._

_That doesn't surprise me. I've always liked that boy, Aeris. You could do a lot worse._

_Mum- you do know he's a Turk, right?_

_Your father wasn't perfect either. Now stop chatting and start casting._

Aeris rolled the earring between her fingers. Though cool to touch, the materia filled her with warmth. She looked up. A glow like candlelight filled the room. Sephiroth hovered above her, smiling beatifically, sword drawn.

            _Please_ ,she begged of anyone who was listening - her mother; the father she had never known; the spirits of her ancestors; Zack - _make it work._

A shot rang out - and in the same moment, a great surge of power jolted her body. Whiteness flared, blindingly bright, obliterating everything. The heat was intense; she felt it, yet it did not burn her. Static electricity crackled in her ears. Something heavy hit the ground with a thud.

            "Aeris!"

            She knew that dear, familiar voice. His strong arms caught her as her legs gave way. "Tseng - I'm all right - "

            The air in the room was cooling, the dazzling light ebbing away, leaving dark spots dancing across her fields of vision. She rubbed her eyes and looked around. Sephiroth had vanished - or perhaps not, for _something_ lay on the President's desk that had not been there before, something like nothing so much as a shapeless hunk of meat charred beyond all recognition. Was that him? Had _she_ done _that?_

More footsteps came thudding up the stairs. Turning, she saw Rude appear on the landing, closely followed by Elena and two dozen helmeted infantrymen. "What happened?" said Rude, taking off his sunglasses to scan the room in disbelief.

            Elena, seeing Aeris in Tseng's arms, swallowed a sob of misery.

            "The Cetra has killed the Abomination. And The Turk shot Hojo." The animal was speaking again.

            (The animal, speaking!)

            "Hojo?" said Reno. "You mean Sephiroth didn't kill him? I didn't think he left anything in the labs alive."

            Not far from where she and Tseng were standing, an old man in a white lab coat lay sprawled in a puddle of his own blood. He was dying. Yet he was laughing - or rather, giggling, a horrible sound to hear. Aeris felt she recognised him, but perhaps that was just her imagination filling in the blanks in her memory.

            "Why would Sephiroth kill me," said Hojo, "When I am his - "

            A fit of coughing interrupted him. Bloody froth gathered in the corners of his mouth. Aeris turned to Tseng. His gun was still in his hand, and her question was in her eyes.  For an answer, he gestured at a piece of lead piping lying close to Hojo's hand. "He was going to bash your head in."

            Disengaging herself, rather reluctantly, from Tseng's arms, Aeris knelt down on the floor next to Hojo and put a hand on his clammy forehead. "Why did you want to kill me?" she asked.

            "You were in - " he coughed - "Sephiroth's way. I had to - try - "

            "Cetra," said the animal, "If you don't do something, he will die."

            Hojo let out a shuddering sigh. "My precious specimen, annihilated. My beloved experiment, a failure."

            "Experiment?" said Twin Turbines.

            "He means Sephiroth," said the boy SOLDIER, Zack's friend. "Sephiroth was made in Hojo's lab."

            "Heh, heh," Hojo cackled through blood-stained teeth, "He wasn't the only one..."

            Revulsion twisted the SOLDIER's young face. "We don't owe him any favours. Let him die."

            "Yes," Hojo giggled, "Let me die."

            "No loss to humanity if'n we do," said the one with the gun-arm.

            Aeris stroked the old man's sweating brow. "Professor, I can heal you, if you let me."

            "Ah, is it you? I can't see so well without my glasses. My old friend Gast's daughter, is it? How is your mother, my dear?"

            Aeris glanced up at Tseng. His face was stony. He didn't want her to do this, but he wasn't going to interfere.

            "You know my mother's dead," she said.

            "There's so many frivolous things in this world. You can't expect me to remember them all. I had bigger things to think about. And yet, in the end, all my calculations were incorrect." He broke into another fit of coughing.

            "Won't you let me heal you?"

            "Well," he said, "That would be an irony, wouldn't it? No. I don't think so...." He turned his face away from her, and breathed out, and did not breathe in again.

            Tseng bent over and closed his eyes.

            All present now transferred their attention to the charred corpse lying on the President's desk.  Was it Sephiroth or wasn't it? It didn't _look_ like Sephiroth, but then again it didn't look like anyone; it was too badly burned for that. In shape it was generically human, but its arms and legs had been reduced to stumps, and it had no head.

            "Is that - a wing?" said the SOLDIER, reaching out to put his finger on the spot in question. The instant he touched the corpse, it disintegrated with a soft _pfft,_ releasing a small cloud of sparks into the air. All that was left was a pile of ash and some grease stains soaking the Presidential blotter.

            "Nice move, chump," said Reno. "Destroy the evidence, why don't you?"

            Those strange, depthless blue eyes flared with anger, but all the SOLDIER said was, "I think I might have seen it before."

            "If it's answers you seek," said the animal, "You would have done better to keep the old two-leg alive."

            "If you know so damn much, how come you didn't say so sooner?" shouted the man with the gun arm."

            "Wait," Reno exclaimed, "I know what that thing was. The Prof's headless freak, the one from the labs."

            "Jenova," Rude's deep voice rumbled.

            "Jenova," muttered the boy SOLDIER, deep in thought.

            _The calamity from the skies_ , Ifalna murmured in Aeris's ear. _You have done well, daughter. We're all very proud of you. Well, my dear, I must be going now. Get in touch when the baby's on the way._

_Baby? What baby? Mum, come back -_

            "Oh my god," cried Elena. Everybody's head shot up to see what had so alarmed and excited her.  "Mr Tseng, look, the Vice-President is here - I mean the President, he's the President now, isn't he? You're the President now, Mr Rufus, sir. Congratulations!"

            "Oh, frabjous day," said Rufus smoothly as he strolled into the room through the door that led to the helicopter pad, looking even more impossibly handsome than he had the last time Aeris had set eyes on him. _If he keeps this up_ , she thought, _one day he might just spontaneously combust._

            To her left she heard Twin Turbines murmur in admiring tones, "What kind of man is he, I wonder..?" The SOLDIER must have heard her too, for his scowl grew deeper.

            An equally handsome, expensively sleek guard hound, as black as Rufus was white, trotted at his heels, lashing its tentacle in a show of gratuitous aggression. When it caught sight of the talking beast, it crouched down on its haunches, pricked up its ears, and started purring like an express train. The talking beast rolled its eyes.

            "Sir," said Tseng, his jaw working angrily, "What are you doing here? I told you to stay somewhere safe."

            "What place could be safer than this? All my Turks are here. This room looks perfectly safe to me, safer than it's been in... oh, as long as I can remember." His gaze strayed over the stiffening corpse of his dead father as he said this.

            "Oh my god!" cried Elena. "I totally forgot! This must be awful for you, sir. I'm so sorry about your father."

            "Are you?"  Rufus looked mildly surprised. "Nobody else is."

            "Grrrr..." Gun-Arm shook his fist at Rufus. "Just what I'd expect from a Shinra. Can't even wait till his daddy's cold before stepping into his shoes."

            "Excuse me," said Rufus, "But who _are_ you? You sound as if you know me."  
            "We're Avalanche!" cried the girl with the breast-plate.

            "Ah, the social justice warriors."

            "The Shinra's the real social ju - I mean, you're the terrorists!" shouted Gun-Arm. "Holding the planet to ransom!"

            "I wouldn't technically call it _ransom_ ," said Rufus. "But no matter. We'll come to that shortly. You already know who I am, which leaves me at a bit of disadvantage. You," he pointed at Breastplate Girl. "What's your name?"

            "I'm Jessie. I'm a demolitions expert!"

            "Excellent," said Rufus. "We always need more demolition experts. You?"

            "I'm Biggs. Shinra destroyed my family!" cried the man in the bandana.

            Rufus threw another quick glance at his father. "Yes," he said, "Mine too. You?"

            "I - I - I don't know," cried the fat man.

            "Existential crisis. Good. You?"

            "Tifa Lockheart, bar-tender - "

            "C'mon, sir," said Reno, "Check out the rack on her. This is that chick Rude's always banging on about  - "

            "Shut _up_ ," hissed Rude.

            Aeris wondered if she was the only person who noticed how Tifa's wine-coloured eyes slid over in Rude's direction and looked him up and down, thoughtfully.

            "You?" Rufus pointed at Gun-Arm.

            "Barret Wallace. Used to be a coal-miner. Your company burnt down my town."

            "Corel? Then you have every reason to be angry. That was an atrocity. And you? You're a SOLDIER?"

            "Ex-SOLDIER," the surly boy replied.

            "I'm a lab experiment," said the animal.

            Aeris had the pleasure of seeing Rufus Shinra do a double-take. His already pale cheeks grew paler, and he threw out a hand to steady himself against the nearest wall. "It talks," he gasped.

            "I also bite," replied the animal. "Do you?"

            "Oi," said Reno, "No threatening the President. Let's keep it nice and polite, okay?"

            "As you like," said the animal. "But please, keep her away from me - " He gestured with his head at Dark Nation, who was slowly creeping closer to him, stumpy tail wagging. "She's not my species. It's awkward."

            Rufus whistled Dark Nation to heel. Reluctantly, she obeyed.

            The boy SOLDIER gripped his sword a little more tightly. "Sephiroth may be dead, " he said, "again, but we still have a score to settle with you, Rufus.  All of us have suffered at this company's hands. The Shinra Corporation is killing this planet, and we're here to stop you."

            "Huh," Gun-Arm grunted approvingly. "Didn't know you had it in you, Spikey."

            "I think it would be better if we discussed this in private," said Rufus. "Infantrymen, you are dismissed."

            "Sir!" protested the Turks together.

            "Sir," said Tseng, "Need I remind you, these people are known terrorists, your enemies, and they're armed?"

            "Yes," said Rufus, "They _might_ try to kill me, I suppose. But I don't think they will. Not if they're willing to hear me out first."

            "You got a mighty high opinion of yersself," said the Gun-Arm.

            "Or of your intelligence," Rufus replied.

            While Gun-Arm was puzzling over this one, trying to decide if he'd just been insulted or complimented, Tseng told Elena and Reno to clear all non-essential personnel from the Presidential offices. Once the infantrymen were gone, Reno went to the labs to check whether the headless specimen's container was empty. Elena stood guard at the door to the President's office, to ensure they would not be interrupted.  Meanwhile, Rude went to the little kitchen in the secretarial pool to look for tablecloths. When Aeris realised what he was about, she joined him, and together they covered up Professor Hojo's and President Shinra's bodies. She wondered what Rufus had in mind. A part of her recoiled at the idea of negotiating with these terrorists. Dozens were dead as a direct result of the choices they'd made; dozens more would have died if she hadn't saved them. In that sense, Avalanche were opposed to everything that she, as a Cetra, stood for. On the other hand, they hadn't hesitated to leap into the fray when they found her fighting Sephiroth. They had courage - and convictions. She had to admire them for that. And they were right about the Planet. And from what Tseng had hinted, Shinra knew that they were right - and the new President, it seemed, had plans to do something about it.

            "Now, then," said Rufus. "Let's get one thing straight from the start. All of us have blood on our hands. I freely admit that this company has committed more atrocities than I can list right now, and all of you have suffered as a consequence. Your grievances are just. I wasn't a party to those decisions, but I am willing to take responsibility for them: they were done in this company's name, which is also my name. As for you - the casuality list from that bomb you set off three days ago is still growing."

            "That was my fault!" Breastplate Girl confessed with tears in her eyes. "I didn't make it right. I didn't realise the blast would be so big."

            "I could have you arrested for murder and executed," said Rufus. "You could, of course, fight back. You could kill me - but before you could make your escape, my Turks would kill at least some of you. Your families could then come seeking revenge. We could burn down your village. You could blow up my city. You could kill my people. I could enslave yours. Is this really how we want to go on? Has _any_ good come of it, ever?"

            "Dammit," said Gun-Arm, "Yo full o' fancy words, but we need practical solutions!"

            "There's been too much blood shed. This world needs healing. Isn't that right, Miss Gainsborough?"

            She felt Tseng's reassuring hand on her shoulder, and put her own hand up to clasp his. "The planet can heal itself," she said, "But it wants our help. People and the planet should work together. By healing the planet, we heal ourselves."

            "What's your proposal, Rufus?" asked the boy-SOLDIER.

            "I'll get to that in a minute. First, I'm going to do something risky, but it's a risk I'm willing to take. I'm going to tell you something highly confidential about myself, something no one else knows, aside from my Turks here. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but you borrowed the name Avalanche from another group, didn't you?"

            "Sir - " Tseng began.

            "Damn right," said Gun-Arm. "They were the original resistance movement. Started up in Cosmo Canyon. It's my dream to go there one day."

            "Grandpa," sighed the talking beast.

            "Well... " said Rufus.

            "Sir, no - "

            "You may not know it, but we are comrades," said Rufus. " _I_ was one of the founding members of that movement, and because of my committment to that cause I spent four years in this building under house arrest, practically in solitary confinement. My Chief Turk can attest to this, can't you, Tseng?"

            With a groan, Tseng buried his face in his hands.

.

            It was a hard sell, but of course in the end Rufus won them over. He was a born salesman, blessed with the gift of the gab he'd inherited from his great-grandfather, Silas Shinra, who had founded the family fortunes by selling improved rat-traps door to door. Barret put up the most resistance, but even he, scarred though he was by Shinra's cruelty and shortsightedness, could not withstand the combination of Rufus's sinuous logic and blinding charm. And when, at last, they had arrived at a complete mutual understanding, and hands had been shaken on it, and Rufus had broken into his late father's liquor cabinet and offered everyone some excellent brandy, and Tifa had scribbled her phone number on a scrap of paper and passed it under the table to Rude - when all of this was done, Rufus called for a helicopter to take Avalanche home. Tseng, Aeris and the new President of Shinra, Inc. went out onto the helipad to see them off, while Reno, Rude and Elena stayed inside to supervise the clean-up.

            As the _whup-whup_ of the helicopter faded into the dawn sky, Tseng said to Rufus, "I still think we should have shot them, sir."

            "Well, perhaps. Time will tell. But I didn't want to start my reign with a mass execution of youthful idealists. It wouldn't have set the right tone."

            "I wish you hadn't told them about Avalanche."

            "Basic psychology, Tseng. I have something on them, they have something on me. We're in the same boat now; we'll sink or swim together. It makes them more inclined to trust me."

            "They're just a rag-bag bunch of terrorists. You're not accountable to them."

            "I know that. But I do rather feel I ought to be accountable to _someone,_ and they'll do as well as anyone. That was my Old Man's problem, you know. Nobody ever held him to account. I don't want to go down that road."

            An icy wind was blowing across the tarmac. Aeris's hands had gone numb. She burrowed them under Tseng's jacket and giggled when he jumped at the touch of her cold fingers on his skin. "But I'm freezing!" she informed him.

            The look of tender indulgence with which he repaid her was all the warmth she needed. The power she possessed to draw such softness from such hard man never ceased to amaze her.  It wasn't a Cetra thing. It was all her. _I must be a magician_ , she decided.

            "Reno can finish up here," said Rufus. "You should take Miss Gainsborough inside. I imagine you two have a lot to talk about."

            "There will be lips and tongues involved, I can assure you," she answered pertly.

            Tseng had to clear his throat several times over. Rufus laughed. "Miss Gainsborough, you discombobulate my Chief Turk. It's quite delightful. I hope you stick around."

            "Oh," said Aeris, "I intend to, don't worry. They don't call me Sticky for nothing."

.

            The instant the lift doors closed on them, they were in each other's arms, and they didn't stop kissing until the doors opened again and they saw, to their surprise, that they had come all the way down to the mezzanine. They hadn't remembered to stop kissing long enough to press the button for the Turks' floor.

            "Going up," laughed Aeris, a little breathlessly. The doors hissed shut again, the lift began to rise, and she pulled on his tie to bring his face down to hers so she could kiss him all over again.

.

            Aeris would never have been so crass as to compare two lovers, both equally beloved, against each other. Zack had been her first. Tseng - she hoped - would be her last. Between them, they were her life, her everything.

            The little camp bed in the Turks' secret room was very narrow. Tseng fell off it twice, the first time to the accompaniment of Aeris' peals of laughter, the second to her groans of frustration. The floor was less hazardous. They stripped the bed of its sheets and blankets, and made their love nest on the carpet instead.

            What surprised her most was how freely he laughed. He seemed to have shed all inhibitions along with the suit. Not that she was complaining.

            What surprised her second-most was how much he liked to have his hair pulled.

            They made love until they fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, he first in the middle of kissing her, she while resting her head on his chest listening to his heart beat, and it was as fine and sweet and passionate as any lovemaking has ever been in the history of their world or any another - and that, really, is all anybody needs to know.

* * *

 

_There's an epilogue!! Don't miss it!!_


	8. Epilogue

A fruitful year passed. Rufus's plans for weaning the world off its reliance on mako by developing more sustainable sources of energy proceeded apace. Barret Wallace, under contract to Shinra, had begun building a solar farm in the Corel desert. As soon as the farm was operational, the Corel reactor would be decommissioned. Hydro-electricity dams were also being constructed at the old Corel rail-head and in the Nibel mountains. If these test projects proved successful, Rufus intended to build similar dams in the mountains south of Midgar. Eventually, the city would switch over entirely to hydro, solar and wind power. By the time he celebrated his tenth anniversary as President, he wanted mako energy to be consigned to the history books.

            In ones and two the "lost" Turks came back to work, to Tseng's relief and Aeris's great happiness. The biggest surprise of all was the day that old fox Commander Veld showed up on their doorstep at midnight, accompanied by a wild-looking young man with shaggy black hair and long fingernails, dressed in a crimson cape and brass-plated boots, whom Veld introduced as his old partner, Vincent. "He's been sleeping," Veld explained.

            "Must have been a long sleep," said Tseng.

            Vincent had the eyes of a wild-cat.  Any sudden movement might send him fleeing into the night, never to return. Aeris gently took his hand in hers. "You are welcome here," she said. "Come in," and leaned forward to brush his cheek with a kiss.

            Love seemed to be particularly infectious that year. Cissnei and Reno were thinking about getting a puppy together; Rude and Tifa were going steady. The ex-SOLDIER boy had settled down with Jessie the demolitions expert, and the regular sex seemed to have alleviated a lot of his surliness. He had started a delivery business, subcontracting for the Shinra Post.  Biggs and Wedge talked about getting married. Veld and Vincent _did_ get married. Knives fell out of crushing on SOLDIER Matheson and fell into crushing on Elena instead, to which Elena responded, "You're cute. Why not? I'll give anything a whirl!"

            Even the new President of Shinra, Inc. was not immune to the pink fume of romance permeating the planet. Towards the end of the year he attended a cultural function at which he was introduced to the Crown Princess of Wutai, and was instantly so smitten by her feisty attitude and wayward dress sense that he was now pursing the possibility of a diplomatic marriage aimed at healing the old enmity between Wutai and Shinra. Princess Yuffie was said to be open to negotiations. Rufus lived in hope.

            One afternoon, almost a year to the day since the death of the Old President and the battle with Sephiroth, Aeris, six months gone with child and positively glowing with hormonal radiance, forced her way through the jungle of luxuriant vegetation surrounded her bedroom door (the house plants had been overdoing it even since she'd fallen pregnant; they were almost out of control) to find Tseng busy packing. A suitcase stood open on the bed. He was making neat piles of everything he would need: spare suit, second spare suit, civvies, socks, underpants, machete, guns...

            "New mission?" she asked, slipping her arms around his waist.

            He kissed her brow. "I hope it'll only be for a few days."

            "Where to?"

            "Nibelheim. Something's been bothering me. The connection between Jenova and Sephiroth.... Nobody's ever found his body."

            She hugged him tight. "It probably dissolved in the mako."

            "Probably isn't good enough. I need to be sure." He stroked a hand over her taut belly, grinning like a little kid when he felt a tiny kick. "I want to know this world is safe when she comes into it."

            "You mean _he_."

            "We'll make it a boy next time."

            "Six of each," Aeris laughed. "I won't be satisfied with less."

            Tseng bent to give her a quick kiss, then straightened up and returned to his packing. "There's another thing," he said. "Jenova's head. Sephiroth took it with him when Cloud threw him into the reactor. It might still be out there. As long as there's the possibility some part of Jenova still exists, the threat remains. And that's why," he concluded, shutting the suitcase with a snap and turning to her with a look of determination on his face, "I intend to find it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my prompt: "Aeris gets enrolled in the Turks, acting on one of Tseng’s bad ideas to get her into ShinRa’s favour in order for her to be granted more freedom. Being young and naïve, she doesn’t really understand what she’s getting into, but is too curious and willing to try and make the Department leader change to sign off. Tseng/Aeris (and eventually some rocky bonding between Aeris and Rude/Elena/Reno?)" I fear I have only partially fulfilled it. Stories have a habit of going their own way...
> 
> I originally conceived this story as a Jane Austen-ish romantic comedy with darker undertones, in which a young woman has to make a journey of self-discovery before she understands why the man who's been there all the time is the right man for her. In my headcanon Tseng and Aeris have a Mr Knightley/Emma Wodehouse vibe going on. She has to learn to appreciate just how fabulous he is. "I should like to see Emma in love, and in some doubt of a return; it would do her good." Substitute Aeris for Emma, and you can see where the germ of this story came from. 
> 
> Then Sephiroth made his entrance and the whole thing degenerated into farce. Sorry, Seph. Rufus didn't help much, either. As a bonus, here's a couple of lines I took out from the scene on the helicopter pad:
> 
> Tseng: If you let Avalanche go, we'll have to find another scapegoat. The public need to see someone punished.  
> Rufus: I've thought of that. We'll pin it on Heidegger; that way we can kill two birds with one stone. It's either him or me, Tseng. If I have to sit through one more board meeting listening to that stupid horse laugh, I'm going to shoot myself.
> 
> I had to cut this piece of dialogue because I didn't think Aeris would be able to ignore a plot to scapegoat an innocent man. Poor Heidegger. Rufus and Tseng probably had this conversation another time. 
> 
> If anyone thinks Reno was acting out of character when he told Aeris to run instead of pushing her aside and making a run for it himself, you're probably right - but then again, he really likes Sticky; she's his partner; he's supposed to be protecting her; plus, I think he has a bit of a chivalrous streak buried really, really deep down inside his black heart. 
> 
> Merry Christmas!


End file.
